


Fade to Red

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Aftermath of Injury, Beautiful Scenery, Blindness, Brief mention of slavery, Committed Relationship, Coping Techniques, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family Bonding, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Kanan has Hera's back, LOTS of comfort you guys, Massage, Mental Health Issues, Movie Night, Music!, Mutual Masturbation, Nightmares, Non-Penetrative Sex, Oral Sex, PIV Sex, PTSD, Politics, Porn With Plot, Relationship Discussions, Sexting, Shower Sex, Table Sex, a03 says that's an actual category, because you know that whole crew has them, chair sex?, everyone else is a little on the oblivious side, getting away with it, if you're picking up what i'm putting down, interrupted at the least opportune moment, like they're physically very comfortable, parenting (sort of), star wars rebels season 3, top-notch communication skills, well porn with character development at least, yep that's a recognized category too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:54:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26272945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: “I like that they have this very mature adult relationship.” -Dave Filoni, taken slightly out of contextThis series is dedicated to Kanan and Hera’s sex life, which is sustaining us all during these trying times. Specifically, it's a look at their relationship during Season 3 of Star Wars Rebels. This work is a sequel toShannon Phillips’sFade to BlackandFade to Black and Back, though you should note the change in author. Twenty-two chapters of explicit kanera shenanigans, one dedicated to each episode, detailing what happens after the credits roll.
Relationships: Kanan Jarrus & Hera Syndulla, Kanan Jarrus/Hera Syndulla
Comments: 118
Kudos: 142
Collections: Kanera Week 2020





	1. Steps Into Shadow, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ShannonPhillips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonPhillips/gifts), [veritascara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritascara/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Fade to Black](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4835939) by [ShannonPhillips](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonPhillips/pseuds/ShannonPhillips). 



> When I approached her about taking over the _Fade_ series, [Shannon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShannonPhillips/pseuds/ShannonPhillips) made it clear that she wasn’t planning to continue into season three, and was incredibly gracious about letting me take over what was originally her brilliant, naughty brainchild. She’s a little burned on Rebels after the series ending, and I do not think she is interested in reading or discussing this work. We’ve got to mourn in our own ways, friends. My way is apparently writing lots of sex. 
> 
> Shannon, thank you, ma’am, for the permission, all of the Kanan and Hera talks over the years, and being such a generous and supportive friend. 
> 
> A huge thanks goes out to [veritascara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritascara/pseuds/veritascara) as well for her diligence and her genius as a beta reader. Veritascara, I don’t know how you managed to fit in this level of critique amidst a busy real-life schedule. You are a jewel. 
> 
> Although this is a continuation of _Fade to Black_ and _Fade to Black and Back_ , I’m using my own headcanons rather than imitating Shannon’s because...well, what’s the point in writing fanfiction if I’m not writing what I want? 
> 
> I’ve been sitting on pieces of this story for six months, hoping to find time to roll it out to you a chapter a day, and… I just can’t do that. My job, my family, my mental health, and my stamina will not allow. I’ve got a decent chunk of it partway drafted, and you will get the entire thing, but I can’t promise it to you on a regular schedule. It’s probably time to stop making the perfect the enemy of the good, or you’re never going to see any of this thing. 
> 
> Enjoy, and I still love you lots, Rebels fans!

At first Kanan sees red—bright red like you see when you close your eyes in the sunlight on a bright day. He blinks and gets a hazy image of Maul—then red again. He blinks and sees a shape and knows that it’s Maul, then it’s nothing but reds and oranges, the colors of fire. He has to close his eyes to fight. 

When he opens them again he doesn’t see anything. 

The whole trip back from Malachor they pretend to meditate. Ezra’s not really meditating; he’s telling himself it’s all his fault and trying to find a way to fix things. Kanan knows this because he’s not really meditating, either—he’s holding on tight to Ezra’s signature in the Force, warm and angry and needing him so much. It’s Ezra who keeps him anchored. 

Until they land on Atollon, and he can sense her before the ramp even lowers: Hera, waiting, nerves strung tight as a bowcaster. He feels Ezra’s spike of shame as they walk down the ramp. At the same time he feels Hera’s heart break when only two step out of the ship. And Rex next to her... He can’t. He can’t feel what Rex is feeling and stand up straight right now, not when everything is so raw, not when he failed to bring Ahsoka back with them. He does what he’s always done—whatever he has to to survive. He closes himself off to the Force. 

But Ezra doesn’t need to know that. “Steady,” he tells his padawan. “I’m here.” 

Then Hera’s hands are on his face, getting a good look at him. He waits, ready to offer whatever comfort she needs, too. But when she wraps her arms around him, whole and solid, pushing past the walls he’s built in his mind without even trying, he feels only relief from her. He made it back.    
  


…

Over the next few weeks, Hera holds them all together with her dogged insistence that things are going to be okay. She escorts him to countless medic’s appointments, holding his arm as he bumps against walls and keeping him from walking into doors. She sits next to him in the chair provided for family as med droid after med droid examines his healing eyes, as hope dwindles—No, you can keep the eyes; prosthetic ones won’t help anyway. It’s the nerves that are damaged beyond repair… 

Finally, when the only procedures left to suggest are such dangerous long shots that no Rebellion doctor will risk them, Kanan calls it. “Enough,” he tells Hera. “I’m blind. There’s nothing we can do about it.” 

Sitting next to him, Hera says nothing for a moment. Then she says, “Okay.” That’s all.    


  
…   


Ezra is a mess. Kanan can feel the boy’s anguish every night and half the time during the day too, and suspects he’s curled up on his bunk just trying to make it through. He jumps whenever Kanan knocks though and acts like everything’s: “Fine, just fine. Don’t worry about me. I’m the one who came out of that temple okay.” They don’t want to burden Kanan with anything, so he sits around bored, nothing to do but brood. 

  
…

He needs to rely on the Force. At first he thinks he can use it to function—amplify his senses enough to open cans, to walk through the base without tripping over packing containers—stuff like that. When that doesn’t work, he gets angry for a while and then decides that maybe he’d better open his mind to a wider range of possibilities. Okay. This is the way it is, then. What does the Force want him to do? 

No answer comes, just pieces of voices and the clicking of the spiders from beyond the perimeter. Sometimes when he meditates deeply he hears a boy’s voice:  _ Master, I’m hurt. Master, please, I don’t know what to do. _ Then he goes running to Ezra who tells him, confused by his alarm, “I’m  _ fine, _ Kanan, nothing’s wrong. Are  _ you _ okay?” 

His eyes are healed, the scar tissue still tender and tight, when the boy comes to him in a dream. It’s not Ezra. He’s someone from the past, a friend from the Jedi temple that Kanan had thought lost. He’s here now, though still hurt and lost in the dark somewhere, but Kanan can find him. 

“Master?” the boy asks. 

“I’m here,” Kanan tells him, but he can’t remember the kid’s name, so he can’t call out to him. 

“Master?” 

Relief at finding him alive turns quickly to panic. Kanan’s looking through the dark, pushing aside soft curtains...or maybe spiders’ webs? He doesn’t know because he can’t see them. Then the territory gets rougher, vines or creatures snaking around his ankles so that he is forced to pull a foot free with every step. He can follow the voice, but he doesn’t know where he’s going. Trees part up ahead; his dreaming mind forgets that he’s blind, and he can see their silhouettes against a lighter gray background. “Don’t go,” he tells the boy. “I’m coming.” 

Then he wakes into total darkness, furious and frustrated because he’s lost the kid for good this time. 

He feels for the wall of the bunk behind him—right where he left it. He sits on the edge of the bed and swings his feet to the floor. That feels familiar, too. He looks around wildly for some kind of orientation, even knowing that he’s blind, wondering in that half-waking why he can’t find anything. It takes him two solid minutes to be certain that he’s awake and in his bunk on the Ghost. This is usually the case. 

Two soft footfalls in the hall, and then Hera’s voice outside the door, quiet. “Kanan?” Everyone else must be asleep. What time is it? He turns towards the chronometer— Oh. He has no way of telling what time it is without a vocal prompt, and that tinny voice will wake the whole ship. 

“Yeah,” he tells her. “Come in.” 

The pneumatic hiss of the door. Another footfall. It shuts behind her. “Can’t sleep?” she asks. 

“Just woke up.” 

“Bad dream?” 

“No, more like a weird one. You’re still up?” He wonders how to ask her what time it is without giving her another reason to worry that he’s helpless.

“Just finishing a project. I heard you on the way to my bunk. I think everyone’s asleep but Sabine.” She’s watching him, trying to decide how rattled he is; he doesn’t need the Force to know that. “Do you mind if I stay?” 

He opens his mouth to say, “You don’t have to,” then stops before he can get the words out, because...is that wistfulness in her voice? “Sure,” he says instead, sliding back into bed and fumbling with the covers to straighten them. “Come on.”

Hera’s already in her pajamas, the soft leggings and fitted shirt that double as work-out clothes. When she sits on the edge of the bed, he knows she’s pulling off her socks like she always does. Then she slides under the covers and they twist and scoot and end up spooning, each movement old habit. He slings an arm over her. She rubs her foot against his calf, enjoying the roughness of the hair on his legs. It is blissfully normal. She lets out a weary sigh—relieved, again—and he presses his nose to the back of her neck and lets out a long breath—home, again. 

“I’ve missed you,” she says. 

“Me, too,” he says. 

It’s Hera who turns to face him, but they both decide to kiss at exactly the same time. They start rough, each one hungry to take comfort from the other. Kanan knows exactly the moment when grief and need become arousal instead: Hera bumps her hips into his, pushing him up against the wall, and his cock twitches in response, and then she’s grinding her hipbone between his legs and he slips a thigh between hers, and it’s… He lets out a sharp breath. He hasn’t exactly been...top form, lately. In fact, he’s been afraid that if they ended up in bed together he wouldn’t even be able to… Apparently he needn’t have worried. Every press of her body against his elicits an arousal as sharp as pain, and if anything, he’s getting hard like a desperate teenager. 

He loosens the cap on her head then runs his hands down her lekku and over her ass, feels her squirm as she tries to pin him to the back wall of the bunk. Well, he can help with that. Hello, again, Hera’s ass, and then he pulls her tight against him. 

Hera is predictably trying to eat him, mouth at his shoulder, teeth at the pulse point in his neck, tongue licking a stripe up his throat. Each touch sends a warm little jolt that he can feel straight down to his legs.

He rocks against her hip. She rocks against his thigh. He needs… he needs… 

_ She can’t give you what you need _ , he thinks.  _ Sex can’t make you better. _ He is all at once outraged at himself.  _ You stupid, bitter man, don’t you even know when you’ve got a good thing…  _

...And he’s gone still, he realizes. 

“Kanan?” 

He kisses her temple. 

“You okay?” 

“Yeah.” He rolls her onto her back and buries his face in the base of the nearest lek, a good way to make her stop asking questions. 

A moment later she relaxes in his arms again, scritching her fingernails over the hair on his cheeks. He fumbles for the waist of her shirt, then pauses his assault on the lek to sit up and pull it over her head. 

Does she arch to get it off, rolling her spine and balancing on her head until it’s over her shoulders, then rolling back the other way while she helps him get it over her head? Does she do that unnecessary shimmy of her hips when she’s working the shirt over her lekku? He doesn’t know and he can’t feel; he’s busy with the shirt. He tugs it free. This is the part where she lies in front of him, spreading her arms a little, crooking a knee his way, posing shamelessly, bare from the waist up. 

This is the part where you get breasts, says that animal part of his brain. Only he doesn’t, he’s never going to see Hera posing like that for him again, not right now, not ever. 

What a stupid thing to get so upset about. 

“Kanan, we can take it slower if you don’t want to stop.” 

He pulls his own shirt off, instead. “I don’t want to take it slower.” 

“Are you s—” 

But he’s rolling onto his back, pulling her onto his chest now, and there are the breasts, pressed up tight against his bare skin, which is almost as good as seeing them. He drags his thumb down the outside of one, soft, plump skin from armpit to ribs, as Hera lets out an involuntary breath against his neck. That ought to get her back in the game. 

“Kanan!” 

“Hera.” He runs his other hand down her thigh, leaning up to lick her neck just under her ear. It’s not that he’s so desperate for sex right now—not anymore—it’s more that he’s desperate not to stop, not to talk, not to break in this one area of his life. He wants things to be okay between them. 

“Hey!” Hera catches his hand, forceful. Apparently they’re not okay.

“What?” 

She pants for a moment, catching her breath. “If you’re all right, it’s fine and we keep going. But if you’re  _ not _ , you need to stop trying to make me come on top of you as a distraction from what’s really going on and Slow. It. Down.” She shifts her hips, sliding to the side with her leg slung over him. 

He curses under his breath. 

“You want to talk to me?” Hera asks. 

“No.” 

“Are you okay?” 

“Yes.” 

“Kanan Jarrus!” 

He snaps back just a little. “Of course I’m not okay! But I don’t want to deal with that right now. I don’t want this to be a therapy session. Just... fuck me. Please.” 

She’s looking at him, he knows it, making a decision about whether to fight or give up. “All right,” she says finally.

“I’m sorry,” he offers. 

“It’s okay.” 

She leans in again, she’s pressed against his chest again. This time the kissing is slower, open mouthed, tongue as much as lips. It takes a while for the tension of their conversation to fade away, but when they finally relax, they trade pleasure back and forth for long minutes. Kanan stops trying to keep track of everything, hovering near meditation, their movements slow and rhythmic. He’s kissing Hera. He knows how to do this. She’s got her eyes closed, too.

When she slides her hand down his chest to fumble with the clasp of his pants, his cock jumps to attention again. It’s kind of sexy (he tells himself), not knowing where her hands are going to go next. Not that it’s so difficult to tell. She strips the pants off of him, then climbs back up, her hand closing around— 

HOLY Force, that’s her mouth. 

And her hand. 

A lek falls forward and smacks him in the thigh. He reaches down to caress it, or the line of her cheek, or whatever he can reach, fumbling like this. 

“Okay?” he asks. 

“Hmm.” A satisfied hum, vibrating against his cock. 

Stars, she’s got to be a sight, lips swollen from kissing, very deliberately ministering to him outside of her mouth where he can see. A pang of genuine grief shoots through him, straight from his heart to his groin, mixing with pleasure until he can’t tell the two feelings apart. He misses her, misses her so desperately and she’s right here as near to him as she can possibly be. Kanan struggles for breath, gasping through the great weight of tears that won’t fall. 

Hera mistakes his gasp for uncomplicated arousal and takes him into her mouth fully, doing all sorts of mysterious and wonderful things with her tongue. A warm, rough flick against the big vein, a swallow, the lightest scrape of teeth. Her palm flat against his abdomen, her fingers circling him tightly. 

_ Shut up, Kanan’s brain, just shut up and let me enjoy this _ , he thinks. He takes an even breath, letting himself sink into the sensation. He takes another and hopes she won’t stop. She doesn’t. He just lets himself have this for long minutes, his attention focused nowhere but on the delight where her mouth meets his cock, and then he drags himself to the surface enough to realize that she’s been down there for a while and he reaches down again and meets her lek a little sooner than he thought he would. She stops in place, her head tilting up against his hand. Looking at him, then. 

“Do you want to—” he’s catching his breath— “move it along?” 

She considers. “Hmm,” she says with his dick in her mouth again, just to watch him squirm. She pulls off with an audible smack, “We can move on if you like, but I’m having fun here. Can I just—” she tightens her hand around him— “Keep going this way?” 

One voice in his head points out that the last thing he wants is a pity fuck. Another tells him very rationally that this is hardly the first time she’s gotten him off with nothing but her mouth. The loudest voice just wants that sensation back. It’s the first time he hasn’t felt on edge since Malachor. “Tell me when you want to stop,” he says. 

“Oh, I will.” 

And she’s back, licking, tasting, kissing, seemingly enjoying herself. At first he keeps his mind focused on her—Hera.  _ This is Hera working you over, and everything is all right. _ Eventually he loses himself entirely, running away from the implications of his injury and fears about how they’re ever going to manage to fight the next inquisitor and guilt about Ahsoka, who is gone forever now… He can stop all of those voices; he knows how; he’s done it before. Just push thought away and concentrate on her tongue marking steady swipes from base to tip, oh, that is good. Just don’t think about anything else. Just don’t feel. 

His breath and his cock tighten. She squeezes him hard in her fist. He pushes into her mouth, needing more, needing to forget everything but the feel of lips and tongue and throat swallowing on him. Hera moves her hand to his hip and lets him go and he bucks, shallow thrusts into her mouth, and soon— 

Not soon, right now. She closes her fist around the base of his cock again and pumps and licks him until he’s done. 

Usually he’d get up and find a cloth, soak it with warm water, and clean them up, but he has no idea where a cloth would be and he wouldn’t know where to wipe, anyway. 

Hera lays her head on his thigh, hand still and tight around him, no sense of urgency about moving. He shouldn’t have done this. The rational voice tries to tell him it’s fine, but no, he shouldn’t have done it _ this way _ . 

“Can I touch you?” he asks. 

“No, I’m satisfied. I just want to lie here with you like deadweight and not move.” 

Deadweight. 

_ Shut up, Kanan, she’s fine. You’re fine. Everybody’s fine, okay?  _

He shouldn’t have treated her this way. 

_ What way? _ The rational voice intrudes again.  _ You never worried about getting a blowjob from her before. _ But that voice is tired after so many months of trying to keep him sane. 

He knows what’s bothering him. He lost himself in her touch for a moment, forgot about all of the bad things and just existed for pleasure, right then, but it wasn’t meditation. It was… the way he used to think, before Hera. All the sentients from every walk of the galaxy, no matter how drunk he was, no matter how little either of them cared. Every threesome in a back room, every bartender who’d dropped to their knees while he was blitzed… He’d just turned off his rational brain and lived from sensation to sensation for years. 

He hates that Kanan. That Kanan was an asshole who thought of nothing except his own problems and who he could use to make himself feel better. And he’d sworn, he’d sworn the moment he came aboard the Ghost, never to do that with Hera. 

Hera stirs. “Hold on.” She’s leaning over him to look for a cloth or a half-dirty shirt or something. The mattress, thin as it is, shifts under her weight. Shuffling...okay, she’s found some kind of cloth somewhere and is cleaning him up; she’s having to do everything. And all this time he’s just lying there and thinking about how useless he is, about how he should at least be able to do  _ this _ . How many times have they made love in the dark? It shouldn’t be an issue. 

He’d thought things were getting better. He knows he hasn’t been the most...forthcoming person over the last few months—he hasn’t really helped anybody, while they’ve been helping him constantly—but he’d thought he was working his way back to competency. 

_ How many millions of people in this galaxy have gone blind before you, Kanan? What in the seven hells is wrong with you? Get it together. _

Hera tucks herself against him and deposits a bundle of cloth on his stomach. 

“What’s this?” 

“Your sleep clothes.” 

She’s still wearing her pants. Another wave of guilt hits him. “Are you sure you don’t want—”

“Not tonight, love. I’m satisfied.” 

Is she, or does she merely not want to put more stress on him? Would it be fair to Hera to try and give her pleasure while he’s such an angry, broody mess, anyway? She may not be Force sensitive, but she always says he isn’t hard to read. He sighs. “I should get dressed before I lose my clothes.” 

She sits up. “I should go and let you get some real rest. Unless— Kanan, what’s wrong?” 

He’s even let this injury sour his time with Hera, that’s what’s wrong. He snaps at them all, Ezra and Zeb and Sabine, he ignores Chopper, he makes Hera deal with all of his frustrations and anxieties, and he gives them nothing in return, just takes, even takes pleasure. 

“Breathe, love, I think you’re having a panic attack.” 

He breathes. He’s not having a panic attack, he’s just an asshole. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

Her arms are around his chest, her breasts pressed to his back, her breath against his shoulder. “Sorry for what? You haven’t done anything wrong.” 

“I tried to be...better. For you. And for them. And I thought I’d succeeded. One injury and it’s all coming unraveled, and every time you come near me you get hurt.” 

“Kanan, nobody’s hurt but you.” 

“You’re fine, Hera? You’re happy these days?” 

She stills, and he can feel her holding her breath, feel the absence of that little cloud against his neck. 

“We’re okay. We just want to help you, that’s all. We’re trying to help you, and you’re pushing us all away.” 

“I’m trying to protect you.” 

“From what? From you? Kanan, I’d rather get hurt than lose you!” 

“You won’t lose me, only…” 

She waits. 

“...I’ve got to find a way forward, and I can’t. Not yet. This is something I need to handle myself.” 

He sits there, hot and embarrassed, bathed in her exasperated silence. This is too hard, it’s more than he can handle. He knows how lucky he is, how many other people in the galaxy function just fine without sight, but those words mean nothing to him right now. His eyes...were part of him, and they’ve been taken away from him, and he doesn’t know what to do, and it’s made him into a petulant child when they all deserve more from him. The despair wells up again, thick in his throat, and along with it the desire to fight, to run, to do anything just so that he can  _ see _ . In his nightmares he is stumbling through the dark, trying to find his way back through the door to the world he knows, only he’ll never, ever wake up. He’s a grown man and a Jedi Knight, and here he is floundering his way through each day in terror, like a child. And Hera knows it, and she’s trying to reach out and drag him to safety, but how profound is his shame, to be so thrown by this. Rendered useless… No, worse than useless, he’s a liability...

Hera is watching him, but of course he has no idea what she sees. When she finally answers, her voice is very soft and very rough. “You don’t need to handle it yourself.” 

“Hera, I am a...battleground right now. I’m trying not to let all of you get caught in the crossfire.” 

“We’re not afraid. Don’t shut us out, Kanan, please.” 

“I am  _ trying _ —” His voice breaks. He takes a deep breath and tries again. “I am trying so hard. I will come back, I promise, but you can’t fix me. I’ve got to do that part myself.” 

She pauses, evaluating him, and once again he doesn’t know what she sees. Finally she comes to some kind of decision. “What do you need from me?” 

“Take care of them so I can figure out how to take care of myself.” 

“Okay.” She doesn’t like it, he can tell. “Okay, I will. But come back to us, love. Promise.” 

_ We’ll see each other again some day _ , he’d told her. 

“I promise,” he says. 

She kisses the side of his face, then tucks his clothes into his arm again. She stands, and a soft rustling tells him that she’s finding her own clothes. 

“Just...sleep, okay? Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning.” Hera’s voice does little to conceal her doubt. Whatever he does, he hurts her. 

“I will.” 

That soft pressure is her lips on his forehead. Then she walks away, because he asked her to. 

The door shuts behind her. 

He still doesn’t know what time it is. 


	2. Steps Into Shadow, Part 2

Through the cockpit viewport, Hera watches her boys walk back towards the Ghost in the afternoon sunlight. Ezra says something. Kanan turns as if to see what he’s referring to, and Hera winces—he’s looking directly into the glare of the setting sun. But no, he can’t see it, so why is he turning his head to look? 

Kanan turns back again and puts his hand on Ezra’s shoulder. A pause while he makes some kind of speech, Ezra listening with his head cocked to the side. Then Ezra stops and catches his arm. “Thanks,” he’ll be saying, or “I know.” Kanan takes it in stride. 

Hera brings her hand up to her mouth and dissolves into tears. Relieved, happy tears. Ezra is going to be every kind of grounded. He’d very nearly died and could have taken the rest of the crew with him. He’d lost the  _ Phantom, _ her  _ ship. _ He’d probably flirted with some questionable dark-side powers, if the little information Sabine gave was any indication. 

...And despite those worries, she hasn’t felt so alive in months. She had resigned herself to losing the both of them once, waiting while they flew off to Malachor. And they’d come back to her, both of them, though their losses had been...real. Real, and in some ways, still irrevocable. 

And then Kanan had withdrawn little by little, and Ezra had struggled and refused to let them help—maybe they couldn’t help—and the ground had dropped out from under her again. She’d held them together as best she could, but she’d been tired from trying to do this on her own, floored by her inability to help more. There they had both been, standing right in front of her, alive and healthy, and she’d kept on losing them a little at a time. 

And now they’re found, back at her side without even a fight; she feels it right down to the soles of her feet. 

She stops crying before they get to the Ghost’s ramp and puts her face in order quickly. Ezra, subdued for once, heads towards the back of the ship, while Kanan joins her in the cockpit. 

“What did you tell him?” she asks. 

“I said I’d always come back.” 

“What did he say?” 

“He said, ‘I know.’” 

“Are you? Back?” 

“I am.” 

He holds his arms out, and she goes to him, tucking her head under his chin as she always does while he wraps his arms around her and holds tight and the hard little thing in her chest that has kept her upright for the last two months crumbles and comes out her mouth in a long breath. 

“I missed you,” she admits. “So much.” 

“That’s good to hear, because you’re stuck with me now.” 

She wraps her arms around his middle and squeezes so hard no Inquisitor in the galaxy can rip him away, squeezes until a choked Kanan says, “Oof! I do still have to breathe, though.” 

Then she laughs at herself and takes his hands instead. “What changed?”

He shakes his head, pleased and a little bewildered. “I couldn’t tell you why, but… I found what I was looking for. In the Force.” 

“I thought you said it couldn’t help you see.” 

“It can’t. Not that way, anyway. But...I found out where I was wrong. Where I’ve always been wrong; it had nothing to do with my eyes.” 

“That’s...mysterious.” 

“I don’t think I can explain it.” 

“Things are different, though.” 

“Everything’s always different from one moment to the next. It’s not something to fear.” 

Six months ago she would have rolled her eyes and groaned at the Jedi wisdom act, but now she...isn’t so sure it’s an act. She isn’t sure enough to make fun of him. “But you’re back,” she asks again, just to be certain. “With me.” 

He puts his hands on either side of her face so he knows where she is, leans in, and kisses her brow softly, just below the flight cap. “With you and with you and never leaving.” 

_ Take me to bed?  _ she wants to ask.  _ Just hold me all night so tightly that I can’t sleep with both of us packed into those stupid, tiny bunks. _ But it’s not bedtime yet, and she can hardly meet his return with immediate needy demands. 

Later she does fall asleep in his arms, though, sitting in front of a holo that he’s listening to and everyone else is watching. She remembers the others going to bed, one by one, but she doesn’t remember drifting off herself, nor does she remember Kanan waking her enough for her to get herself to bed, which must have happened. But she wakes in her own bunk in the morning, alone but well-rested and happy. 

Given a good night’s sleep, she bounces back from the stress of these last few months quickly. The next evening she’s got plenty of energy, and when the crew peels off to their various activities after dinner, leaving her to put away the dishes that Kanan carefully dries, she indulges her rare mischievous streak. She takes the last bowl from him, sets it on the counter, and keeps his hand instead. Kanan turns towards her with that warm smile. She tilts her head up to meet his lips and he tilts his head down as if he can see it coming (which, maybe he can—they know each others’ every touch at this point, and hers had been an offer and a request). When their lips meet it is slow and familiar and sustaining, with nothing of grief left behind the kiss.

But it’s hard not to bump her nose on that stupid mask. Instead of saying  _ I hate this thing, _ which she’s wanted to complain about for a while, she murmurs, “I’m taking this off,” and Kanan lets her, his bare face surprisingly intimate after the months of distance. 

She steps in. He wraps his arms around her waist. She wraps her arms around his neck. They kiss back and forth like a conversation, Hera licking the corner of his mouth because Kanan likes that, Kanan catching her lower lip between his own in that slow way that never fails to start a simmer in her abdomen. They pause. She presses her nose and mouth to the side of his face. They both laugh because they are happy. 

“Hey, Jedi, take me to bed?” she asks, voice pitched deliberately low. 

He sweeps her into his arms and misses the door by half a meter, banging them both into the wall and sending them into fits of giggles. 

“Not much of a pick-up,” she gasps between laughs. 

“Yeah, maybe you should walk.” 

And then they’re kissing against the doorframe again, Kanan breathing “Force, I love you,” against her lips while she nips at his ear in a way that means “I love you” and “Take your pants off” both at the same time. 

Hera’s sorely tempted to just pull him back into the galley and hit the door lock—why bother restraining themselves all the way to somebody’s bunk?—but no, that’s not the reunion she has in mind. She wants something that lasts for a while and doesn’t leave dents from the metal plating in her rear. Instead she says, “Come on,” and takes his arm. They manage to keep their hands off each other until they reach his bunk. They’re even relatively subtle walking through the hallway. Well...as subtle as you can get on a ship this size. 

She’s been in his room more times than she can count in the last six months, but this time just the sight of the low bed sends another pang deep into the pit of her abdomen. She’s going to have him on top of her for the first time in half a year. Inside her. It’s a good thing Kanan can’t see her face, because she’s pretty sure she’s embarrassingly flushed. 

“Lock the door?” he asks. 

“Yeah.” 

They strip each other between kisses, a fumbling affair, Hera working all the buttons and clasps for both of them while Kanan clumsily removes their clothes and lets his hands get distracted whenever it suits him, in some very interesting...ooooohkay, that’s the inside of her thigh. 

Whew. 

Hera squirms and doesn’t make it any easier on him because that’s the inside of her knee and ooooh now he’s going  _ back _ up her thigh, and the longer she takes to get her clothes off the more excuses he has to run his hands wherev— Okay, they’ve established that she’s ready for him. That was fast. 

Kanan’s hands skitter away from sensitive areas and over her ass instead, pausing to knead the muscles at the small of her back, a different kind of pleasure. Up to her collarbone, stroking it casually… It tickles and feels fantastic at the same time, and she does a fair job of not squeaking audibly. Kanan knows, though, and he’s got that shit-eating grin on his face again, the one she hasn’t seen for six solid months, and it’s her Kanan again, it _ is—  _

She shrugs off the rest of her clothes and tugs off his and tumbles him back on the bunk in less than a galactic standard minute. 

He’s warm under her palms, all soft skin and rough hair that would be weird if it weren’t so familiar by now… Stretching out on top of him, she kisses him again, this time engaging her brain enough to notice that this feels different with so much hair on his face. And that’s worth exploring too—hair on his face that’s strangely rougher than anywhere else on his body, cheeks under her palms that are no longer smooth, the bare patch around his mouth, the little notch of bare skin on each cheek where his beard just seems to grow that way. 

Kanan catches a hand and kisses her palm. “Shouldn’t I be the one exploring with my hands?” His tongue swirls around the center of her palm, a little point of delight. 

“Mmm, keep exploring with your mouth.” 

He kisses her throat. “Why limit myself?” And then he’s back at her throat again, teasing with lips and teeth, while his hands run down her back, over her rear, hitching her up closer to him by her thighs. Oh, he’s already interested, too. Hera squirms against him until he’s gasping in frustration, then rolls to the side and grips him firmly in one fist. 

“Not that I’m keeping count—” a kiss to her sternum— “and I know it’s been a while—” another to her shoulder— “but I’m pretty sure it’s not my turn.” 

“It could be your turn.” 

“Okay, but if you’re letting me make the call…” He removes her hand gently and nudges her onto her back. Then he slips down far enough to take a breast into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the nipple, and this time Hera does keen aloud, a sharp little yelp that’s sure to be heard outside their cabin. 

“Shh,” Kanan teases. He runs his hand down her stomach, between her legs, parting and touching carefully, experimentally to see what she wants right now. Everything, everything feels good. Moments later his lips follow the same path. She parts her legs eagerly as he settles between them and tries not to buck against him when he licks a crooked stripe from bottom to top. 

“Oh, that’s...good.” He does it again, but this time her moan is punctuated by a little, surprised gasp at the end. Something is...different. 

His head comes up, instinctively trying to look at her and gauge, though he can’t see her. “You okay?” 

“Yes, just...there’s something…” 

“What?” 

“Do it again.” 

He licks her slowly, and she considers carefully. What’s different? Just the hint of something around her tchilla, the sensitive fringe surrounding her sex, something that’s almost too much sensation, but not quite. 

She’s not imagining it, she’s sure. 

“You need more experimental data?” he asks. 

“No, it’s…”  _ Oh! _ She cracks up laughing. 

“Not exactly flattering, Hera.” 

“It’s your moustache! You’ve never had a moustache before.” 

“Is it going to be a problem? Because I can’t exactly see to shave.” 

He’s still got his face tilted up towards her, expression huffy and fond and confused and amused, all at the same time. 

She cups his cheek, then runs her fingers over the bridge of his nose, the line of his brow, her light touch making him scrunch his face, ticklish. “No, I don’t think so. Just don’t grind it into me and it should be...nice.” Very, very nice in fact. 

His fingers are playing at her now, and she has a sudden, intense urge for conversation to be over. “I can’t see your face, so you’re going to have to keep me informed, okay?” he says. 

“Oh, yes.” 

He adds tongue to fingers again. 

“OH, yes!” 

And that, she can tell from the way his beard scrapes against her, is Kanan’s smug grin. 

Every single touch feels desperately perfect. It’s almost like nobody’s touched her for a solid six months, and now...and now is the monsoon after the dry season, that’s what. 

Kanan is ministering to her steadily and she’s panting rhythmically and if he keeps this up for a few more minutes, she’s going to come. She doesn’t want that yet. “Kanan.” 

“Hmm.” 

“Kanan!” She touches his temple, and that gets his attention. 

“You okay?” 

“I want you inside me.” 

“Are you sure?” His thumb plays lazily over her clit. “You seem to be enjoying yourself.” 

Her breath falters. “In me.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” He slides his way up her body. When she reaches down to help ready him, she finds him already hard, that powder-soft skin stretched firm over his erection. He settles over her, fitting easily into the cradle between her wide-spread legs. She guides him into place. And then he’s pushing inside, nerve endings that have felt nothing for so long re-igniting again, and yes, this is what she wants, as he draws back and pushes inside her more deeply, this is what she needs. 

Her breath catches. 

“Too much?” 

“No, no. Not too much,” she keens, on edge. 

He draws out again, then skirts his thumb over her clitoris as he pushes in, in, and his touch fills all of her senses. She breaks with a ragged breath, then a moan, clenching around him over and over again in a beautiful, drawn-out orgasm that tightens and then relaxes every single muscle in her overstressed body. 

Kanan fucks her through it with leisurely, shallow strokes, slowing to a stop as she relaxes. “That’s my girl.” She lets out a ragged breath. His hand on her hip is steady. “You good?” 

She arches up and just manages to catch his earlobe between her teeth. “I’ll be good after you come inside me.”

He laughs, the tension of his own arousal behind it, and pushes into her experimentally. She’s relaxed, though, and soon she’s holding him while he rocks into her eagerly, deeper and even deeper. His face goes tense. A drop of sweat falls on her. She digs her heels into his rear, then runs her hands down his back and squeezes his ass because it is such a very good specimen. 

“H—” It’s meant to be the beginning of her name, she’s pretty sure. 

She arches up again, nuzzling his face out of the way to lick up the center line of his throat. “Come in me, love.” 

He lets out a sharp breath again.

She finds his ear and breathes, “Come on.” 

His hips thrust into her again, and again, and then he drives home and groans and everything is warm and good. He drops his forehead to her collarbone, gasping. 

“Good,” she breathes into his ear again. 

Kanan kisses her, beard bristly against her face and nose, and...well, she should have expected that. 

“What?” he asks. 

“The beard,” she laughs. “I can taste myself on you.” 

“Delicious.” He kisses the side of her neck with a loud smack, purposely tickling. 

“You—” —she pushes at his face, laughing— “—are not nice.”

He rolls to the side obligingly, freeing her. “I was nice enough for you a minute ago.” 

“Hmm. Well, you’re also very nice sometimes. Hold on; I’m not going anywhere.” Hera wriggles halfway out of bed to find an old shirt on the floor. She hands it to Kanan, who mops his face and chest with it. Then he lies flat on his back and tugs her closer. 

She squirms against him, looking for the comfortable place, and ends up with one leg sprawled over his, her head on his chest, eyes closed in the dark room. Every shadow that’s draped itself over them in the past six months melts away.


	3. The Holocrons of Fate

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) [Veritascara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritascara) read this for consistency and phrasing, gave me good advice about the ideas in it, and fixed my commas. That's quite the skill set. Thank you, ma'am! 
> 
> 2) I swear next chapter they will be out of the bunks and they'll never go back again. 
> 
> Wait. 
> 
> That's not meant to be ominous. They'll probably go back again.

Maul is gone. He’s not dead, but he’s gone, and they’re safe for now. After the crew debriefs that evening, the kids leave the common room arguing, Sabine picking just a little fight to remind Ezra that he’s part of the family, that she’s the older one, that she’s got his back. It’s her way of showing affection. Hera rolls her eyes, but secretly she finds it kind of nice... except for the part when they walk away and their absence leaves a hole in the room where their noise had been a minute before. Kanan sits silently. Hera looks at the painting on the wall, remembers that morning, and shudders. 

“What?” Kanan asks. 

Hera shakes her head, not panicked but definitely still spooked. She leans against his arm and buries her face in his shoulder, smashing her nose into the muscle for warmth and the safe smell of their soap mixed with his skin. Kanan wraps his arm around her waist and pats her thigh. “Time to get some sleep, captain. We’re all a frayed bunch of nerves.” 

“Put me to bed?” She laces her fingers through his where they graze her leg and tries to make it sound like a joke instead of a plea. 

Kanan pauses, and she knows that he’s considering her, that once he would have given her a long, level look. He lets it go. “Okay, that’s fine. My quarters?” 

_ “No,” _ she says emphatically. 

“All right, your quarters. I’m going to change for bed first. You want to wait here?” 

“Oh, kriff, Kanan.” Hera sits up and removes the arm he has draped around her, remembering. “He probably ransacked your clothes drawer too after I left. I’ll come with you and help you find things.” 

“You really don’t have to, Hera. It’ll just take a little longer.”

She weighs his discomfort, fumbling blind for something that could be stuffed anywhere, against her own—just jitters. “I’ll come.” 

The second they step through the door, though, Hera realizes she’s severely underestimated her “jitters.” She doesn’t let herself so much as hesitate on the way to the drawer under his bunk, but her heart starts beating like an old Ghaltric 730 trying to make the Kessel Run. 

And Kanan feels it, blast him. He can’t see her face anymore, but now he seems to have a direct line to her feelings—much more than ever. “What’s wrong?” 

In the left-hand drawer sit two broken holocrons. In the right-hand drawer, not even a shirt is unfolded. “Nothing,” she says. “He didn’t touch anything else in here.” She pulls out an old shirt and the first pair of pants she can find and then shuts the drawer quickly, aware that her voice has faltered just a little. Kanan probably hasn’t missed that either. 

“Hera—” 

“Can we just get out of here right now, please?” 

“Sure.” 

They go back to her bunk, and Hera turns on the small lamp with the golden light. That’s better.

“You want to tell me what has you so rattled?” Kanan asks. 

She does. Oh, she does. But Maul has pushed him beyond the limits today—goaded him and frightened him and used him—and if Kanan rose beyond that and did some new impossible things in the name of rescuing them, well, that’s only because necessity brings out the best in him, not because he has infinite emotional resources. She’ll need to find her footing, sure, but it’s not fair to make Kanan hold her up. “I’m mostly all right. I don’t need to talk.” 

“Okay. But do you  _ want _ to?” 

“I think you’ve had a bad enough day without me putting more on you.” 

“I’ll tell you about mine if you tell me about yours,” Kanan offers. 

“Well…” she considers, “...fair is fair.” She sits him on the long bench against the wall, sits on the floor in front of him, draws her knees up to her chest, and wraps her arms around them. He waits for her to talk, waits long enough for the moment to become awkward. “I don’t know where to start,” she admits. “I’m making it seem worse than it was.” 

“Start with why you’re scared of my bunk. He took you in there.” 

“He didn’t do anything to me,” Hera begins, a disclaimer. “It was just frightening, feeling him walking behind me, all that fury built up in him—you don’t have to be a Force-user to feel it, it just rolls off of him—and knowing that he could just...ignite the lightsaber and kill me in a second. I wouldn’t even be able to defend myself.”

“That sounds awful.”

“Mm.” 

“You want to tell me what else happened?” 

This shouldn’t be the worst part, but it is. “He had us all in the common area, and he asked me for a tour of the ship. Sabine gave me a look. That sick look. He...made me leave the room, and she said ‘Hera, don’t,’ and Zeb was ready to fight. But I couldn’t… He would have killed us right then, I’m sure of it. So I gave her a look, too. I told her not to fight. And I let him take me.” She can’t stand the memory of that expression on Sabine’s face, the smallness in her voice—  _ “Hera, don’t.”  _

Kanan waits patiently until she starts talking again.

“I didn’t understand at first.” She remembers that sadistic satisfaction when she’d opened Kanan’s door — _ “Ah, yes. This is it” _ — and the way he’d made her walk in front of him, the abject terror of being ushered into a room with the door blocked. “But it became clear pretty quickly that he wanted to know where the holocron was.” 

Sitting on the bench beneath her bed, Kanan’s face is in shadow. “You should have told him.” 

Here comes the part she can’t explain, the part that is frightening and confusing and painful. Hera knows what happened, or at least she thinks she does, but every way she can think of to tell the story it sounds like she just...sold out. For the hundredth time today she steels herself to do something difficult and says, “I did tell him.” 

“Okay.” He doesn’t understand, but he knows enough to treat her carefully. “That’s okay. You did the thing that kept you alive, and at the end of the day nobody’s dead and we have two holocrons. And you’re a lot more important than either of them, anyway.” 

“Maybe.” She still hasn’t explained. 

“Maybe, Hera?” 

“There’s more. He… he knew your name, and he knew exactly where the holocron was hidden. Caleb Dume. He called you Caleb. He… I didn’t say anything, but...I think, somehow, I told him.” 

“Oh.” He’s gone completely still. It’s not quite anger, but it’s something close. Then he takes a deep breath and says, careful, controlled, “You know what happened, don’t you?” 

Hera swallows the painful lump in her throat—she wants to cry but she doesn’t  _ need _ to cry—and nods. Then she realizes that he can’t see it, and that she  _ does _ need him to tell her—tell her that this isn’t her fault, that there was nothing she could have done, that she didn’t give away his secrets willingly… So out loud she says, “I’m not sure,” which is also true.

“He took that information from your mind,” Kanan says evenly. “You didn’t give it to him.” 

Having Kanan confirm it out loud is such a relief. “Still,” she muses, “I thought I would be...stronger willed.” She takes a deep breath and pulls herself together. “We never stood a chance.  _ I  _ never stood a chance, and frankly, Kanan, that’s embarrassing.”

He shakes his head with a disbelieving little laugh. 

“I’m serious.”

“Hera, he’s a real Sith Lord, like the one we ran into back on Lothal. He’s killed Jedi Masters single-handedly.” 

“Hmm,” she says, skeptical. 

“If you were very, very lucky and the Force really hated him today, you might have been able to escape,” Kanan concedes. “But your best bet against these guys is always to run.” 

Hera snorts at this ludicrous idea. “I’m not leaving him with the Ghost!” 

“Aaaaaand that’s my girl.” 

She scoots towards him and leans her head against his thigh. He plays with her lekku, fingers scritching affectionately on top of the flight cap. It’s comfortable and comforting, but now it’s his turn to talk. Kanan has spent months trying to find his way out of darkness because of that man, and today he walked into their home—because he hadn’t already done enough damage—and threatened everything Kanan loved. If she was unsettled, he must be near crisis. “I know this must be awful for you. How are you feeling?” 

“The truth? I would rather have walked across Tatooine barefoot in the middle of the day than encounter Maul ever again. But now that it’s done… I don’t think he has any power left over me. And I feel a lot better about Ezra. I’ll tell you about that later. I’m okay, Hera. Really.” 

She believes him, but that doesn’t make up for the danger she’s put them in.  _ Maul _ has put them in. “Are you all right about...your name being out there? I guess the Inquisitors already knew, but I am so sorry. You trusted me. I’d like to promise it will never happen again, but I’m not really sure I can do that.” 

His head comes up, startled, that old gesture of turning to look at her as if to confirm what she’s thinking. “What— I’m not… I don’t care about that.” In a flash he’s slid off the bench and is kneeling in front of her, holding her hands. “Hera, I don’t care about that. I’m just so… angry… I’m trying not to be angry, but I’m just so sorry that happened to you.” 

It still catches her off-guard every time this happens, somebody else being upset on her behalf, giving her permission to be vulnerable. Her breath hitches and she holds it, one last effort at self-control. Kanan hears it, though, and he wraps his arms around her. That little voice in her head says, “Be a tough girl, Hera,” one more time, but now she sweeps it aside easily. She doesn’t  _ need _ to be held, but she _ wants _ to, and Kanan wants to hold her, and it feels so, so good to have his arms solid around her after the last day, the last months. She lets out a shuddering breath that isn’t crying, exactly, just the release of everything she’s had to be strong enough to carry for these last months. He pulls her onto his lap and actually rocks her. 

She’s been keeping it together since Malachor, dispensing missions and advice and overseeing the meal schedule even if she doesn’t actually cook. Making sure people keep their shoes off the floor so Kanan doesn’t trip. Giving him space but staying close enough to come running if he needs her. Watching Sabine for signs that she’s pushing herself too hard. Trying— _ trying _ , and failing, to help Ezra. And today Kanan...fought for them. He didn’t just walk across the hold, he jumped up in the air and spun and took out armed droids and acted for all the world like the old Kanan. She doesn’t know what that will mean for their future. Tomorrow he might be feeling the walls to walk down the corridor again. And that’s fine; she can deal with that so she can help him deal with it. But today… much as she hates the part of the day where she genuinely needed protecting, she is thrilled to have Kanan here with her, protecting all of them.

The shaking works itself out of her system quickly. 

“How are you doing?” Kanan asks when she’s calm again. 

“Hmm…” She takes stock. “I am rattled and frustrated, and for some reason my throat hurts.” She leans her head back against his chest because she can. “And I am very happy.” 

He smiles and massages her neck at the base of her skull. “Want me to leave you alone to sleep and give you a little personal space?” 

“No.” 

“Okay, then.” He unbuckles her earphones and goggles—this he is practiced at doing without needing to see. Hera takes them from him and sets them at the end of the bench without moving. “What do you want?” Kanan works his way around to her temples, rubbing circles into all the tense places on her skull through her cap. 

“Stay with me?”

“If you want, but I can feel how tired you are.” 

“Then you can feel that I’m wired, too. I’m okay, Kanan. I just don’t want to be alone. Or cold.” 

His fingers stay on her, kneading firmly, moving down the back of her neck now. She sighs, partly to signal her approval, partly in genuine relief. 

“Good?” 

“Mm hmm.” 

“Take your shirt off.” 

She wriggles off of his lap and strips to the waist, which is the work of a few minutes, then folds her clothes neatly and puts them on the bench under her headset. Then she turns up the heat in the room by two degrees—an indulgence, but one she feels like they’ve earned. When she’s done she sits in front of him again, knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them, but so much less tense than she’d been earlier. 

Kanan starts on her back, frowns to himself, then tells her, “No, you’re too stiff. I’m going to bruise you like this. Lie down on the bench.” 

“Give me a minute.” If she’s not going to sit on the floor, she’s taking off the rest of her clothes. Her legs are killing her, too; maybe she can get him to massage all the way down. 

When she’s lying on her stomach on the bench, blanket spread beneath her and pillow stuffed under one side of her face so she won’t jam her lekku into the hard surface, she tells him, “Okay. Can you find me?” 

“Yeah, I think I can manage to feel my way around.”

Is that dry humor, Kanan? Well, good. She doesn’t want to move, anyway. She knows Kanan’s massages, and chances are that she’ll be drooling on the pillow by the time he’s done. 

He starts right in the middle, at the small of her back. How are his hands always warm? His fingers dig into sore muscles, which relax as if charmed, leaving behind only tiredness and a pleasant tingle. He’d been a physical therapist for a few months once, he’d told her. She wonders for the first time how much good a Jedi massage would do in unwinding the body’s trauma. It’s been great for her. 

He moves up a few inches, hitting a particularly tight spot on either side of her spine, the pressure of his fingers igniting that flash of pain that’s really more pleasure. She groans. 

“That’s a good groan, right?” 

“You know it is.” 

He works his way up her spine, then gently around her now-bare scalp again, then down her shoulders and arms, working loose the muscles in her hand before giving attention to each finger. By now the top half of her body feels like it’s floating. But when he starts back at her waist and presses one hand into the muscle high on each side of her rear, she lets out something like a yelp before she catches herself—that’s too tense. 

He freezes. “Want me to skip that?” 

“No, it’s good, just...slower. Start more gently.” 

“Yes, ma’am.” Slower, then, over her rear and down the tight backs of her thighs. Calves, feet,  _ toes, _ goddess yes. Everything is so tense that she’s right on the line between relief and actual pleasure. 

“Flip over,” he tells her, and she rolls to her back obligingly, repositioning the pillow as she goes. Feet again, then shins, then thighs, which aren’t yet sore from kneeling on the ground for hours but will be tomorrow. He reaches the place where leg joins hip and she shivers, a gesture he knows well. 

“Want me to keep going?” 

“Yes.” 

But instead of taking the direct approach, he skims his fingers through the dip on the inside of her hip bone and up her stomach, stroking the side of her breast with just his fingertips when he gets there. It does send a delightful spike of feeling straight between her legs, but the much less pleasant shock it sends up her spine is stronger. Normally she would arch and twist prettily under a touch like that. (Normally, she would be putting on a bit of a show for him.) Tonight, though, she doesn’t need any more adrenaline. She takes his hand and places it palm-down on her breast, settling it more firmly. 

Kanan squeezes. “Like this?” 

“Mm hmm.” 

He kneads carefully, comfortingly. The pit of her abdomen starts to warm up. But when he leans over to flick her nipple with his tongue, she’s protesting again— “Nmmm.” 

“Okay, not that,” he agrees. “But explain. Tell me what you want so I can do it.” 

“I want… no light touches tonight. No teasing.” No more people walking just out of her peripheral vision, no more ghost fingers that she can’t push from her mind. “I want you to wrap your arms around me and squeeze me so tight that nothing else can get in.” 

“I think I can do that.” 

“And take off your shirt.” 

“I can definitely do that.” 

Maybe someday they’ll strip each other and throw their clothes into muddled heaps in the corners of the rooms again, but for now Kanan hands the shirt to her and she folds it. “I’m putting it on the bench next to mine. Watch out for my headphones when you get it.” 

He nods in assent, then presses her back onto the blanket with his hand at her shoulder. A moment later he follows, his hips slung across her legs, his hand on her breast, rolling the nipple under his palm. Then he leans in, draws it into his mouth, and sucks. 

Hera sighs happily. Oh, yes. That’s what she had in mind. 

He gives the same attention to the other, sucking and licking until she starts to rock her hips against him. Then he starts in on her neck, moving up. The pleasant, comfortable feeling in her stomach unfurls into something more eager. His bare chest is warm and solid against her and if she moves her knee...there, now his hips are cradled between her legs. That’s what she wants, his weight pressing her into the bench. 

She snakes a hand between them and into his pants. He stifles a groan as she grasps him and adjusts so that the line of his erection presses between her legs. Now she can rock beneath him, and it’s good for them both. 

“You can breathe?” he asks, propped on his elbows above her. 

“Yes. This is good.” Truthfully, her breath is coming just a little short with him pinning her like this, but  _ that’s _ good, too. 

Then he stops asking, because she’s still got her hand in his pants, stroking him and holding him in place as she shifts her hips. They do little that requires a coherent plan for long minutes, just grinding against each other. But this is no way for Kanan to get off, and if she does this much longer she’s going to be rubbed too raw to feel much of what comes next. 

Kanan knows this, too. “You want to move on?” he asks, breath heavy in her ear. 

“Mm hmm.” He rolls to the side and Hera takes a blissfully deep breath and uses it to say, “Take off your pants.” 

A sideways grin. “I can do that, too.” 

She puts them with the rest of his clothes before concentrating on important matters—namely, a naked Kanan Jarrus. He is...no small sight at the moment. She licks her lips hungrily. 

But he doesn’t jump in response the way he usually would because he doesn’t see it, left there in the dark unsure of what she has planned next, waiting for a signal. 

“Kanan,” she tells him, low and throaty, and he  _ does _ respond to that. “I’m going to touch your leg.” Then she does and slides her hand right up, grasping his erection and applying some action. 

Kanan takes a deep, even breath, the way he does when he’s trying to hold it together, the way he does when he’s meditating. “Wait, I have an idea.” He lies down on his side, with her fist still around him. “Now come here.”

She has to let go to fold herself into him, spooning, his chest solid against her back and his thighs pressed provocatively against the backs of hers. 

“Hmm. That’s nice.” He rumbles this directly into her lek, which is also nice, then wraps his arms around her and squeezes tight. Yes, this is what she wants—held and touched, Kanan folded around her like a blanket. 

Except one of the more interesting parts of his anatomy hasn’t found a place yet, and this isn’t quite what she wants. She snakes a hand down between her own legs and shimmies her rear against him, fingers searching. 

“What?” he asks. 

And then she finds him, draws him between her legs, presses all that length against her bare sex. Perfect.

“Uh, that—” Kanan bites back a strangled sound. “That is a good plan.” He thrusts against her experimentally.

She lets out a shuddering breath of appreciation, but her nerves aren’t quite ready for this yet. “Wait. Let me.”

“Okay.” He stills. 

Hera strokes him too lightly to be satisfying but not too lightly, apparently, to be interesting. She slips her fingers between them and touches herself, then back to him, taking turns teasing them until they’re both panting. Kanan’s eyelashes flutter against her shoulder and he lets out a sharp sound as she palms his cock and presses it against her, but he stays obligingly still.

“Do you want to move?” she asks, holding him like that. Kanan wastes no time, pushing between her legs and into her hand, small, fast strokes setting a rhythm. 

He’s not inside her. Instead, he’s sliding against her, long strokes against her slit, her clitoris, her tchilla, hitting every spot. It takes about three thrusts before she’s got them thoroughly slick. 

“You’re quiet,” he pants against her lek. “You okay?” 

She has forgotten everything except the sharp slide of his cock against sensitive nerves, the sticky heat of his chest against her back, the feel of him pressed against her backside from hips to knees, the band of his arm across her chest, holding her in place. “Yes,” she whispers. Her head arches back against his shoulder, seemingly of its own accord. “Yes. Yes.” 

All memory of fear is gone. It’s Kanan’s voice in her ear as he teases the lek with his lips. “I’ve got you. Let go.” 

But she’s not there yet. Instead she looks down, at her own hand pressed between her legs. At the tip of his cock sliding through her folds and into her palm every time he thrusts, a shocking punctuation mark against the pale green of her skin. He’s darkening now, visibly close, the whole thing lewd and so erotic. Inside her, muscles spasm. Outside, he thrusts against nerves that can’t take any more. Hera comes with a prolonged whimper that’s entirely unintentional. 

Kanan responds with something more like a growl and then he’s spilling into her hand and they’re both far more slippery than they were before. He rests his face against the back of her neck for long moments, arm slung over her, while his breathing slows. When her hand is just about to drip onto the blanket, she sighs and pushes gently at his arm, a suggestion. “Come on, love.” 

Five minutes later she’s clean and they’re safely dressed and tucked into the top bunk with its curtains drawn open, Hera much calmer for the experience.

“How are you doing?” Kanan asks. 

“Better. Stay with me?” 

“Any time...Here.” He wraps his arms around her waist and rolls her over him, depositing her on the other side of the mattress, between him and the back wall. It’s not her typical place; she’s usually on the outside. Then he turns over, draws her back against his chest again, and spoons them. “How’s that?” 

“Hmm. Your back is to the door.”  _ That’s not safe, _ she doesn’t have to tell him. 

_ There’s no point in keeping watch on the door; I can’t see anyway, _ he doesn’t bother to tell her. But then again, he doesn’t need to see. 

“Okay,” he says. “I can take care of that.” 

He turns over, Hera facing the back wall of the bunk, Kanan facing the door, and presses his back against hers. With their knees drawn up like this, Kanan’s legs are practically hanging off the edge of the bed, but he doesn’t complain. There, now they’re safe. They can guard each other while they sleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote about this scene right after the episode aired, and I stand by that interpretation. The original scene is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8184475). This is more on the same theme, with sex added. Which...is a good thing, right?


	4. The Antilles Extraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, they're finally out of the bunk, but guess what they do in this chapter? 
> 
> Content warning, they have sex. More or less. Orgasms are had.

“And then he said, ‘I can fly anything,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, Hera’s going to like you!’” 

Peals of laughter from the common area. As Kanan reaches the door, Hera’s asking Sabine, “Can he, though?” They stop talking as he enters, but they don’t stop laughing. It’s moments like these that remind Kanan how close in age Hera and Sabine really are. Two different generations, technically, but sometimes—especially now that Sabine’s getting older—they’re more like older and younger sister than guardian and ward.

 _Trust she’ll succeed,_ Kanan had told Ezra, pawning it off as Jedi wisdom. The other reason he hadn’t worried about today’s mission, the petty reason, was that he knew Sabine, and he knew the way these Imperial institutions drummed original thought out of everyone they got their hands on. There was just no way she wouldn’t come out on top.

“You made some new friends,” he observes.

“Yeah, well—” a pause that means Sabine is shrugging, “—two pilots isn’t exactly going to tip the balance of the war, but I’m glad we got them out. They’re good kids, and they didn’t want to be there.”

“I’ll go set them up with a squadron so they can find their bunks and get some meal cards,” Hera says. That rustling means she had been leaning on something, and now she’s getting up.

“No, I’ll do it,” Sabine volunteers.

“That’s...not your job.”

“We’ve been through some things together. We’re buds.”

“Suit yourself, then. Green Squadron’s severely understaffed right now, if you don’t feel like they need a lot of training up before they fly.”

“On it.” 

After Sabine leaves, Hera’s attention turns to him. “Well, well, alone at last,” she says, but the words are teasing, companionable—she’s not really thinking about starting anything.

“And one of us has even showered.” Kanan runs his hand over his still-damp beard in a ludicrous approximation of a seductive gesture, and Hera laughs out loud. “Ah, there’s my boy.”

“What?”

A rustle of her pants as she shifts from one leg to the other, cocking her hip and considering him. He waits through her scrutiny. “I heard you talking to Ezra after you guys got back. You’re very good with him. You’re always good with him, but lately… you’ve been very calm, very gentle. Very serious.”

“Well…” He thinks about it. “Yes. I guess so. But that’s not... I’m doing a lot better, Hera. I’m in good spirits. Ezra’s coming out of a rough patch, and he needs me to be calm right now. It calms him down.”

“Okay.”

“And I’ve got to stay pretty centered in the Force, or I can’t do things like walk without bumping into walls.”

“Not trying to become a Republic warrior monk, then?”

“Afraid I’m going back to my old Jedi vows?”

Her laughter comes easily, but it doesn’t last. What will their relationship be now; who will _they_ be? No matter what he says, she’ll find a way to make it work for them. Her signature in the Force is easy and affectionate—apprehensive, but moored by a deeper certainty in him, in what they are to each other. Even now, even without his sight, she is so beautiful.

“I made other vows, too,” he says tenderly.

When she responds, she does so slowly, thinking as she goes. “I know things have been...really bad for you. And we didn’t...for a while, and that was of course completely fine. And now you’re back and things are a bit different, and that’s okay, too. We’re still finding our way again. If you’re more focused on other things, other duties, I understand.” He opens his mouth to explain, but she’s not quite done yet. She leans in just a little, drops her voice just a little. “But I still think you’re the sexiest man in the galaxy.” Then a kiss on his lips, mostly chaste. Mostly, but not completely

She’s waiting for him to respond, and it’s Hera, so he’d better be honest. He kisses her lips, then kisses her forehead, then sighs. “Losing my sight has been...hard,” he admits. “I’ve been walking the gauntlet for the past few months, and yeah, it’s been rough. I’m out the other side, though, Hera. And you know what? My vision isn’t the only thing I lost. I don’t think I’m more serious, just more...calm. A lot of the fear is gone. I’ve got this feeling like...things are going to work out okay. I haven’t felt like that in a long time.”

“All right.”

“But…” He grins to himself.

“What?” Hera’s answering smile is in her voice.

Now it’s his turn to lean in, grope for her flight harness at both hips, use it to pull her towards him. “But the day I stop wanting to get in your pants they can put me in the ground.”

She laughs out loud this time and takes his hands. “Good. Come out with me first. Let’s just spend time together, like people do.”

Kanan switches gears seamlessly. “They’re using the big projector to show a holovid in the main hangar,” he volunteers.

“That doesn’t sound like much fun for you.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Mm, no. I’ve been sitting on the Ghost all day flying combat. I want to stretch my legs. Let’s go for a walk.” 

Kanan’s not all that tired. They could walk around the base for most of the night without him stumbling too much or having to lean against her arm too heavily. “All right.”

Hera does lace her arm through his, though, and leads them down the ramp of the Ghost in an easy, ambling pace at odds with the usual businesslike staccato of her heels against the ground. Apparently what she really wants is a stroll.

“Relief mission go okay?” he asks.

She groans. “Another Imperial transport! We slipped past before they actually had time to take out any of our ships or I’d be a _lot_ more upset, but six TIEs is not exactly my idea of a good time.”

“Hera, six TIEs is _exactly_ your idea of a good time.” The late afternoon sun hits his face and ears—hot, but not too hot, the dry breeze wicking away any sweat before he can notice it. At midday Atollon is scorching, but after spending a solid day in a chilly transport, this feels nice.

“I think I was cranky at them for taking out half of Green Squadron,” Hera muses.

“Then you can empathize with how they felt after you got a crack at them. Compassion is a good thing.”

“You’re really funny,” Hera tells him. “How did your mission go?”

“Nerve wracking. I thought I hated sending the kids into danger, but compared to Ezra… let’s just say he did not sit quietly.”

“And then you had to manage his worries and your own.”

“And now you understand the reason for all the meditating.” Kanan picks his feet up carefully, no dragging them—a step and then another step. It works fine. They walk into the cooler shadow of something, a transport or one of the bluffs along the western end of camp. He concentrates—solid silence, not the tinny hum of a hundred thoughts. The bluffs, then. She’s still got her arm laced through his, her other hand clasped around his forearm in case he needs support, but he doesn’t. This is nice.

“Credit for your thoughts,” Hera says, steering them up a gentle slope.

“You like it here.”

“I like having a base.”

“No, I mean, here here. This part of the camp. You come out here a lot.”

“It’s quieter by the cliffs. Whatever this rock is made of, they haven’t been able to stake anything down in it, so it tends to stay deserted. I like to walk and think.”

“And it’s pretty.” He remembers the ochres and yellows, even if he can’t see them anymore.

“It is,” she acknowledges. She’s so quiet she seems pensive, but that’s not the signal she’s putting out in the Force. She’s planning something. “This is a nice place,” she says.

“A secluded cliff, huh? Not too high, just in case I take one too many steps back.” 

“Kanan, that’s really good! What colors are the rock, can you tell?”

He shakes his head. “I can’t really _see_ things that way. You tell me.”

“Hmm.” She unlaces their arms and turns towards the wall to consider. “The top layer is the color of your hair. Below that, the same color as your face. The bottom layer is the way your skin looks under your clothes. Your turn. How close are you to the rock wall?”

He untwines their arms and takes a step backwards, putting his back to the wall. “This close.”

“Very good.” She punctuates her praise by going up on her toes and giving him a kiss—sweet, but not short.

“Alone at last,” he mimics when she’s finished. He reaches out to take her shoulders—there they are—and runs his hands up and down her arms. Here in the shade it’s...not chilly, but markedly cooler than the sunlight. He guesses that she’s smiling at him, and then a moment later he knows for sure because her nose and her lips and her smile are pressed to his cheek. He slouches against the wall so she doesn’t have to stand on tiptoe. “Did you bring me out here because you’ve got designs on me, Captain?”

“Oh, I don’t think I kept that a secret. No schemes, though. I just thought we’d walk and see where we ended up.”

“I don’t know, Hera. All that talk about the cliffs— It seems to me like you made yourself a picture.”

“Not yet. Are you game?”

“I think I could be up to it,” he tells her solemnly.

Hera laughs and leans in to plant a kiss at the base of his throat. He takes his gloves off, then hers, and sticks them in his pockets. Then he draws her index finger into his mouth and is rewarded with a quiet sigh of pleasure. 

“I didn’t bring a blanket.”

“We’ll have to be creative, then.” 

“Mm hmm. Have you ever had sex with your pants on, Kanan Jarrus?”

He starts in on her wrist, tantalizing little kisses. “With you,” kiss, “this year,” kiss, “but we don’t have to go that far.”

Hera slips her other hand into his collar, fumbling and tugging in an effort to bare more of his throat. “Hold on.” She extracts her hand from his ministrations. “I need to check something.” She gives the shirt a hard tug, and he tries not to wince as the collar stretches. If it’s out of shape and she leaves him with a neck full of love bites, hopefully she’ll notice, because he never will. He feels the heat of her skin, then the soft touch of her lips at the hollow of his throat. She kisses him there again—lips, and...tongue this time, a little point of pleasure. Desire stirs in the pit of his stomach, and he sighs. “Hmm,” she breathes on his skin, “You’re a bit lighter than the rocks.” A sharp yank at his neckline bares his shoulder enough to let her lick a stripe right across his collarbone. “You smell better, too.”

His breath comes faster. “Thank you, I showered.”

“I heard. Take your shirt off. No, the mask first.”

He removes them both, as Hera takes a step to the side. He’s pretty sure she’s moved between him and the edge of the cliff, just in case. Then she’s back, fingers trailing from his belt upwards, and that is definitely a jump in certain body parts.

He forces his breath to come out even and avoids any quip that would slow them down right now.

Hera’s moved back again. Rustling. A zipper. When she leans her body against his, pinning him to the wall, her vest is loose down the front and her collar undone and oh, sweet Force, there are her breasts pressed up against him, soft and full. He catches her face in both his hands and meets her halfway for the kiss, leaning down as she wraps an arm around his neck and tilts her head.

She has an agenda; that’s what her kiss tells him. She’s willing to take her time, but intent on having him before they leave. He kisses her again, then again, just for the pleasure of her lips on his. 

Hera’s hand bats at his ponytail like a lothkitten; he doubts she realizes that she’s doing it. 

He runs his palm up her side, avoiding the ticklish spot, and gets a delightful handful of breast without ever breaking the kiss. Then Hera decides she’s had enough of his lips for now and starts in on his neck again, and he slips a hand between them so that his thumb can circle her nipple through the thin material of her shirt. Her breath catches, her flight suit hangs open, and her lips are warm and swollen against his ear now. It is incredibly hot.

Hera’s hand snakes down to rub insistently at his growing erection. This walk was definitely a good idea.

Kanan leans his head back against the cliff and turns his face to the sky, all of his concentration on Hera’s steadily working hand. His legs have gone tense; his stomach has gone tense. She’s squeezing him now, then rubbing again, knowing exactly what she’s doing.

She unclasps his belt and says in that low voice, “You look so pretty with your neck bare like that.”

He swallows hard as she slips her hand inside his pants and grasps him.

Her touch is none too gentle, and he’s well underway when she gives a speculative, “Hmm...” 

“What?” he asks raggedly.

“I know just the thing for this setting.” She unclasps his pants the rest of the way and shifts, going to her knees.

“Not yet,” he says before she can take him into her mouth.

Hera’s tone is quizzical. “Why?”

“Because you haven’t had your turn yet.”

“We have time.”

He draws her up by an elbow, though. “It’s like you’re tempting fate on purpose. Come here.” He turns her around, pulling her tight against him with her ass pleasantly pressed against his erection. Then he slides one hand up to work her breast and keeps the other pressed against her abdomen.

She’s breathing tightly within half a minute, and when he slides that hand down, an appraising touch between her legs, she lets out a little groan and her head falls back on his shoulder. Kanan tugs at the fabric of her pants, the seam a tight line between her legs.

“Tease,” Hera accuses, but he just laughs, enjoying the way her pulse jumps under his touch at that sound. “Kanan!” It’s half request, half exasperation.

Okay, he might as well give her a break. He walks his fingers down between her legs again, and when he finds the spot that makes her whimper, rubs her in tight little circles.

He’s rewarded with her breathless panting in his ear and the grind of that beautiful ass against his crotch as she squirms under his touch. He would have a hard time getting off with just her hand on an open cliffside, but Hera is more than halfway towards orgasm already. He touches her, and she moves against his fingers and his hips in an increasingly urgent rhythm. Kanan keeps his eyes carefully closed, concentrating on the beacon that is Hera’s pleasure. 

The crackle of static on the comm cuts in on his haze. “Hera?” Oh, it’s her comm, not his.

Hera groans in frustration, and for one glorious moment he thinks she’s going to ignore it. Then she puts her hand over his to still it and clears her throat. “What is it, Sabine?”

“Where are you? Commissary’s giving me crap about three more meal cards, and I need you to tell them to piss off.”

She doesn’t groan out loud because the comm is on, but he can tell from the drop in her shoulders and the sharp breath that she’s resigning herself to frustration. “I’m on a walk. I’ll be there in ten.”

“Okay, thanks.”

“You should’ve said fifteen,” Kanan opines when her comm is off again.

“I don’t know...how fast can you walk?”

“Pretty fast.”

“Think you can get me off in another two minutes?” 


	5. Hera's Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kanan and Hera visit Hera's childhood bedroom. I'll let you figure out what happens next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks, as ever, to [veritascara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veritascara), who makes these chapters better with her mad beta-reading skills and fills them with all the commas I left out.

Sometimes, Hera thinks, you just need a good explosion to make your escape. It’s really a matter of necessity.

Still, she gets a mean-spirited satisfaction out of blowing up her own house.

As soon as the first blast clears, they’re up again, running. Ezra helps her father up the Ghost’s ramp, Cham shouting, “Go! Go!” as her childhood home burns behind her. Sabine turns from the pilot’s seat when Hera enters the cockpit, genuinely irritated. “That was _my_ signature exit!”

“And you’re in my seat,” Hera returns. 

Ah, family. 

They hide the Ghost under one of the many rock outcroppings in the Cazne mountains, and then they celebrate. Drinks in the Ghost—caf for Hera and Kanan, a little Lessuvian whiskey sprinkled into Cham’s. Then dinner in the canyons. Hera’s pretty sure the Empire let them go on purpose, which means breaking orbit probably won’t be any harder tomorrow than it will today.

Cham serves them baked tubers and the finest rycrit steaks, grilled over a fire in one of the vented caverns, far too much dinner for their group. Food isn’t nearly as scarce as it had been during the Clone Wars; the problem now is getting it to the occupied areas. Still, this kind of extravagance isn’t her father’s usual style… 

...On the other hand, showing off for an audience is. 

They help Gobi and Numa carry a long table beneath an outcropping, light candles, and eat together, all of them under the stars. It is, Hera has to admit, the best meal she can remember.

“This is beautiful!” Ezra says, gesturing to the sky and the candles and serving himself a third helping.

Cham laughs his _“Oh this? This is nothing”_ laugh. “It is rather a nice evening.” He pushes the tubers closer to Ezra. “Have another. Growing boys should eat.”

Sabine snorts. “If he keeps this up, he’s going to start growing out instead of up.” But she too considers a bite of her second steak with a connoisseur’s appreciation. Good thing Cham has lots of other people to keep guard—they’re all going to be in a food stupor after this.

“I thought these caverns were all bombed and dredged at the end of the Clone Wars,” Kanan says.

Numa laughs. “Nobody can find all the caverns on Ryloth.”

“Yes,” Cham puts in. “The Empire did destroy most of the caves in this area—this was our main base during the first attacks of the Clone Wars. They have yet to discover that they missed some.”

Zeb leans back and lets out a mighty burp. “I’m stuffed,” he says. “Can’t fit another bite.” Sabine elbows him in the ribs, and he burps again. “What? Oh. Right, right. Excuse me.”

Ezra packs in four more bites of steak one after the other, his cheeks pouched out like a lothsquirrel’s, then mumbles, “I’m done, too.”

“Ugh, you two are disgusting!”

“If you won’t have any wine, then…” Cham pauses, questioning.

“No,” Hera tells him.

“Very well, then we will find you some rooms for the evening.” He turns to Gobi. “Perhaps the east wing?”

Kanan inclines his head towards Hera in a gesture that, in the old days, would have been a shared look. _What do you think?_ he’s asking.

She steals a glance back into the caverns, the salt lanterns illuminating their amber stone. It’s warm and inviting. It is also, far more than the house in Tann, the home of her childhood. Her father may have grown up there, but she’d left Tann when she was seven, spent three years in the wilderness off and on, and returned to the big house at the end of the war with a dead mother, an absent father, and a loneliness that hadn’t been filled for years. No, blowing it up hadn’t hurt her in the least. Here is where she belongs.

So she stands, lacing Kanan’s fingers with hers. “You guys go ahead. We’ll just take my old bedroom; it’s right by here.”

To his credit, Cham doesn’t bat an eyelash. Ezra and Sabine chatter excitedly: “I get my own room?” “Look at the striation in this stone!”

“How would you like eggs and blurrg bacon for breakfast?” Cham asks.

Hera wonders if he’s cleared it with Gobi, who will undoubtedly be volunteered to cook.

“Cham ‘Smart Girls Don’t Moon Over Boys’ Syndulla is okay with us sharing a room?” Kanan mutters, incredulous, as the rest of the group walks away.

Hera shrugs. “He likes you.”

“Hmm. Well, the feeling is not quite mutual, but I do like his idea of a dinner.”

What she’s said is true, if simple. Cham Syndulla is...not exactly a speciesist. He won’t dismiss an individual standing in front of him simply on the basis of their native planet. But he _is_ a protectionist, and that often amounts to the same thing, especially when he starts talking about “pride in our heritage, in the face of how the rest of the galaxy sees us,” and “proud Ryl lineage going back generations…” She hadn’t really cared about what her father thought of her relationship with Kanan until it became clear that Kanan was desperate to please him, and then she worried that her father’s disapproval would crush him. But she’d forgotten Cham’s cardinal trait, the fact that he absolutely loves people who are useful to him. And a Jedi on Ryloth is about as useful as they come.

“Childhood bedroom, huh?” Kanan asks as they walk.

“Don’t get your hopes up. It’s nothing impressive.”

It is, in fact, little more than a niche in the wall inside of a larger room that used to be her father’s and mother’s, but now functions as some kind of office. The bed is a flat outcropping carved from stone and outfitted with a simple mattress and—Hera starts in recognition as she ducks past the curtain covering the doorway—still covered by her old orange and yellow quilt. Or again, she supposes; she doubts they’ve left it here for the past fifteen years.

“Put your hand out,” she tells Kanan. He does, and touches the wall. “Now your other one.” She sidles him a few steps deeper into the room and—yep, there. His fingertips brush the far wall. “Now reach up, but be careful.” He touches the ceiling barely ten centimeters over his head.

“Cozy, huh?” he asks.

“Makes the rooms on the Ghost feel spacious.” 

“Tired?”

“Not particularly.” 

“Want to go to bed?”

“Not yet.”

He settles his hand on her hip and lets it wander a little. “Want to kiss against the wall?”

Hera turns her back to him, pulls him in towards her, and wraps his arms around her shoulders. “Or anywhere.”

Kanan nuzzles her neck just behind the headphones. “Kind of hard to get to your lips.”

“What could you possibly do about that?”

She feels his laugh through her back, where they’re pressed together. Then, instead of undressing her in any reasonable way, he nudges the headset hard with his face, pushing the earpiece over her eyes.

She splutters at least as much in laughter as protest. “HEY! Now I can’t see a thing!”

“Too soon, Hera.”

“You are full of crap, Kanan Jarrus.”

He takes off her headset, then his mask, dropping them near the bed. Then he turns her towards him. “I like you, you know that?”

“I like you, too.”

They kiss in the middle of the room, bodies pressed together, easy and slow. Hera gets that little thrill in her chest she’d felt so often years ago when they’d been new, the one that says, _I can’t believe I’m allowed to do this._

Eventually, when they don’t move on, Kanan stops her with a hand at her chin. Checking on her, probably. “I’m so sorry about your house.”

“It’s really fine.”

“See, you say that, but it was your home.”

If they were with the rest of the crew, if she were being responsible, she’d say, _THIS is my childhood home. I do not regret the loss of that house at all. If anything, it’s cathartic._ She doesn’t want to have that conversation right now, though, not when his lips are already warm and swollen from her kisses and his skin smells so good against her face. Instead she says, “Kanan, I am just going to say this one more time, okay? Kriff that house.”

He blinks. “Okay. Noted,” and then takes his cue from her and turns back to the place at hand. “Am I going to fit on this bed?”

“Let’s try.” 

She walks him backwards until his shins hit the stone edge of the bed—all right, it’s one step—and then pushes his chest, a suggestion. Used to their bunks, Kanan ducks reflexively when he goes. Say what you will about tiny bedrooms, though; at least this one has plenty of clearance for them to sit up without bumping their heads. 

“I think it’s fine.” Hera pushes him a little harder, fingers on his shoulder, and Kanan flops flat on his back, trusting that she’s set him up for a soft landing. He lies there, such a pretty sight, splayed against the quilt she’d last seen as a perpetually impatient 14-year-old, and something naughty wakes inside of her. So she flops after him, landing across his chest with enough force that he lets out a mostly teasing, “Oof!”

“Shh, there’s an office right outside here,” she tells him, mocking and arch, before completely ruining the effect by trying to snuggle into his shoulder. But— “This is not comfortable; take your armor off.”

She drops the pauldron with her earphones and his mask, in the careful pile next to the bed that they’re becoming accustomed to. “Wait,” Kanan says, “it’s got to be 30 degrees in here.” He grabs the nape of his neck and pulls the shirt right over his head, leaving Hera a gorgeous view of torso and muscled shoulders as it goes. “Is that what you had in mind?”

“Oh, yes.” She leans in and nudges him down again, tucking her face into his shoulder so she ends up curled just where she wants, half of her body slung over his.

But now Kanan’s wriggling. “Hera, you didn’t take off your armor.”

She mock-grumbles, but sits up to strip it off.

“You might as well get rid of the shirt, too.”

“Oh, is that how you think this is going to go?”

He raises a knowing and perfect eyebrow in her direction. “I think you’re remembering that you’re angry at your father and you’re planning to debauch me in your childhood bedroom to see if you can get away with it.”

“Well, when you say it like that it doesn’t sound particularly romantic.”

He grins. “I’m game.”

 _War is all you’ve ever known,_ that Admiral had told her, but it wasn’t true; that wasn’t _all_ she’d known. 

Hera kicks off her boots and adds her pants, too, to the pile beside the bed. “That’s better.” This time she doesn’t bother to cuddle, just slides her body up his wearing nothing but her underthings until she’s pressed to his chest and their thighs are tangled together, then grinds languidly against the ridge that is mostly, but not entirely, the fastenings at the front of his pants. Kanan’s wearing that fond little half-smile that means he’s waiting for her direction and ready to have his mind blown, so she props on an elbow and kisses him, and then their tongues and lips are dancing, slow, slow, with the careful skill required to turn kindling into a fire.

The lamplight shines golden on Kanan’s face. Force above, he is pretty with his eyes closed, wanting her. She drops a kiss on his cheekbone, then reaches between them to adjust him through his pants, putting him right where she wants him because they have definitely gotten the fire going. And then she moves on him—it would be sex if their clothes weren’t still on—trading kisses while they rub themselves against each other. Kanan’s hands find her ass and he guides her into the rhythm he wants, letting his fingers drift downwards to tease her thighs and send little tremors through her.

Hera sits up. Kanan groans with disappointment as she rolls off of him. “Take off your pants, Jedi.”

“Take off your underwear,” he challenges. 

They’re out of the rest of their clothes in ten seconds flat.

Hera plans her next move while stashing the rest of their things on the floor. She pauses halfway back up when inspiration strikes. Kanan’s propped up on one knee with the other leg twisted under him, his hips slim and his legs muscled, standing at full-mast right in front of her face. That’s what she wants. She wants to pay attention to this whole thing, absorb every detail. She wants to see him.

“I have an idea,” she says, rolling onto her back and tugging him after her.

“I like that.” He lowers his hips over hers, but that’s not quite what she meant, so she tugs at him again.

“No, not like that. Up here.”

“What?” he asks, confused.

“Come up here above me and put that in my mouth.”

And there’s the off-balance little smile. “You’re in a mood.” He straddles her shoulders obligingly, on his knees so his weight doesn’t crush her chest, and cautions, “I can’t see you. I’ll probably hit you in the face by accident.”

But he’s at almost the right spot, close enough for Hera to nuzzle, then stick out her tongue to catch the tip of his cock. “What a catastrophe that would be.”

Kanan lets out a full-throated groan.

“Shh.”

“The walls are rock.”

“The doors are curtains.” Hmm. The seeing thing is going to be an issue—difficult for him to stay in one spot like that without swaying, difficult for him to know where to be—though perhaps easier after she gets her hands and mouth on him in earnest. Still, he is a sight there in front of her face, and she wants him like this. “Put your hands on the wall,” she instructs. “There’s a shelf carved in. Can you rest your elbows on that?”

Kanan leans on his arms and shifts. Hera stuffs a pillow behind her head and it is perfect. She lifts her shoulders and places an almost chaste kiss right on the tip of his erection, and he gasps like a punctured tire. “Hush, love.” Oh, this is always nice, when he’s so excited that her hand can barely fit around him, when she can lick and kiss and tease the pliable skin stretched soft over that hard length. She gives herself long moments to do as she pleases, Kanan making sexy, guttural sounds low in his throat. She doesn’t shush him again; she doesn’t really want him to be quiet anyway, likes the danger of having them both completely naked with him splayed out above her, no way to dart apart at the last moment and pretend innocence if someone walks in. So she teases him and lives dangerously, and she indulges and licks him everywhere so that he slides into her mouth when finally she parts her lips for him. 

Kanan’s approving shout is anything but subtle, but Hera says nothing, mouth full and tongue working at him. She bobs her head, steady but not frantic, watching his cock glisten wet as it slides out of her mouth. Kanan’s reaching one hand blindly for her head, gasping, moving his hips in the tiniest of motions and trying hard to let her keep the lead. He’s not there yet, but he’s definitely going to come in her mouth if they keep this up. The thought sends a delightful little prod deep into her stomach, to the banked cinders of her own patient arousal. She can taste him in the back of her throat, and she swallows reflexively.

It’s easy to fly him higher and higher this way, until every move makes a lewd, wet thwack as his cock leaves her mouth, until he’s gasping in desperate little grunts. Hera props on an elbow to let him hold her head in place, let him fuck her mouth. His head is tossed back, he’s flushed down his throat and into the v of hair across his chest. She is embarrassingly aroused by how strong he looks with the light and shadow playing across his arms and chest like this, and intimately aware of how strong he is as her hands run across his ass and thighs and tug ghost-light at his balls. And then they tighten and he broadens in her mouth and Hera swallows in anticipation.

Kanan pulls back with a gasp and clamps his hand tight around his cock, holding in the semen before she’s gotten more than a taste. Hera pouts at the loss, but she can’t sulk for long, not when he’s leaning back on one arm and gasping like that, gripping what she now desperately wants inside of her. Well, she’s passed that chance by.

“I’ll find a cloth,” she says. He only nods, speechless. She finds her sock, which Kanan probably doesn’t know as he cleans himself up with it.

“That was good,” she says before he can.

“Hera, you’re still panting for it.”

She can’t bring herself to resent his words in the slightest, not when he’s read her mood so perfectly and knows that she wants it a little dirty, not when he’s right. “You want to do something about that?”

“Hmm.” He stretches, rolling his neck, popping his back, considering. “Yeah, I think I could take care of that. But it’s your turn to go where I say, now.”

Her heart thumps in her chest and her belly clenches compulsively. Kanan grins that shit-eating grin, and even laughing at her he’s still pretty. He flips her onto her stomach and tucks her legs beneath her, Hera folding willingly where he puts her. “You must want it bad,” he says, voice low and provocative in her ear. His fingers shimmy between her legs. “You didn’t even get mad about being ordered around.” Then, before she can protest, he slides his finger down the wet length of her cunt and sensation explodes, radiating clear through her body. She moans aloud.

“Shh,” Kanan teases.

“Don’t be a jerk,” she manages. “Do that again.”

He obliges, dragging his finger where she’s wet and swollen and hot, dipping shallowly into her slit, bringing his slick fingers back to tease tchilla and clit everything else responding eagerly down there. _I’m going to come like this,_ she thinks. She’s going to ramp up, higher and higher, until she breaks on what promises to be a glorious orgasm.

She doesn’t, though, because minutes later Kanan stills and says, “Wait, I want to try something.”   
  
Hera groans in disappointment.

“Hey, it’s my turn to decide. You might like it.” 

He slides her off the bed, positions her knees on the floor like she’s praying, then splays his hand at the small of her back and pushes her down hard, leaving her bent at the waist, her top half pressed against the mattress, her knees open and her legs trembling faintly. Then he holds her down with one hand and brings the other back between her legs to fondle knowingly, demandingly. She’s completely open to him, and it is utterly filthy. She moans, over and over again with each panting breath, into the quilt, feeling her climax rumbling towards her with the built-up energy of a thunderstorm.

Kanan’s hand lifts from her back. She swallows her disappointment as the cool air hits the newly bare patch of skin. But the next moment the other hand is between her legs too, working into place and then plunging inside of her while he strokes her steadily. He’s playing her like an instrument, one hand sounding notes all around her clit while the other fucks her hard, now with a second finger.

Somewhere between his hands, sensation gathers to a breaking point, and then Hera is screaming, biting the quilt to muffle her cries, hardly knowing what’s happening as the best kriffing orgasm of her life rips through her. Kanan gentles only slightly, his fingers bringing her through it as if they’re drawing pleasure out of her body. When the tremors finally fade she pulls his hand away abruptly, unable to stand any more sensation.

“Good?” he asks, smug.

“Oh, goddess,” is all she manages as she rolls over to flop halfway on the bed and stare up at the ceiling. “Oh, goddess.” 

“It sounded good.”

“ _Oh,_ karabast.”

“Didn’t think this would be the day I reduced you to incoherent babbling, I’ve got to admit.”

And she _still_ can’t be mad at him because every nerve in her body is utterly and completely satisfied. She can’t explain why this was so hot, what made this time, with just his fingers, her knees sore from the floor, such a wild trip. Kanan crawls up beside her and pulls her into a tight hug, rubbing her arms to help her come back down. “Was that debauched enough for you?” he asks, and it clicks. She’s just come all over her childhood bed, loudly, and she feels like the cat that’s gotten away with the cream.

“Oh, Force,” she says again, letting it go and relaxing at last, returning to some semblance of her right mind.

“Think we could find the fresher?” he asks, tone gentle.

“Yes. And I’m dying of thirst.”

“Can’t imagine why that would be.”

She disentangles them and reaches for their pants. “Dessert nearly killed me.”

“Yeah.” He’s _still_ grinning that naughty grin as he sits up, and she’s beginning to lose patience now. “You probably need to brush your teeth.”

She shoots him a look that he can’t see, puts her hand on his chest, and pushes hard. He falls back onto the bed laughing at her.

“Hera?” Her father’s voice, in the outer room. She and Kanan both freeze.

“Just a minute!” she calls. No time to get dressed. Instead, she flicks the blankets back as quickly as she can. Kanan’s sitting on them. “Get up!” she whispers.

“Do you need anything?” Cham takes two steps into the office. Hera’s senses have gone supernaturally sharp with adrenaline; she hears everything, but she can’t seem to move fast enough to avert this disaster.

Kanan gets the idea and slips under the covers, holding them out for her.

“No, we’re fine!”

Another step. “Are you certain?”

“Don’t come in!” she calls. “I....don’t have my cap on right now.” Then she slips into the bed with preternatural speed and Kanan tugs the quilt over both of them.

From the outer room, a long pause that’s probably not really as suspicious as she fears. “All right. I left a pitcher of water for the both of you.”

“Thank you, father.”

“Goodnight, daughter.”

They listen to his retreating footsteps until neither can hear them anymore, then Hera claps her hand over her mouth, Kanan turns his face into the pillow, and they both burst into very quiet laughter.

“Got to say, I didn’t think I’d have to worry about someone’s dad walking in ever again.”

“Yeah, I think that was the most frightening moment of my day.”

“You really have not been easy on your father today, you know that?”

“Hey, he never explicitly told me not to blow up the house! ...Unless he did. Anyway, I’m sure he never told me not to take a lover to bed in here.”

“I do not want to think about you having that conversation with your father.”

“Me either. That’s probably why we never talked about things like that.”

Kanan runs his hand over the quilt, then sits up, feeling the wall, letting his fingers travel over the niche and inset lamp. “Is this salt?”

“Yeah.”

“Pretty.”

“I like it.”

“So...these are the caverns under Cazne, huh?”

“Large as life.”

“Never thought you’d bring me here.”

“Well, I didn’t know they still existed.”

He leans in and kisses the spot behind her ear. “I’m glad you did.” 

She’s strangely touched by those words, so she takes his hand between both of hers and they sit for a moment in what she thinks is companionable silence. Until:

“Hera?” 

“Yes?” 

“I really, really need to use the fresher.”

She laughs. “You’ll have to put your clothes on.”

That look comes over his face, and she knows that he’s going to tease before he even opens his mouth. “Sure you don’t want me running down the hall naked? I could say I’m looking for the shower.”

“Kanan.”

“It could be exciting to take a risk…”

“No.”

“Come on. You’d like it.”


	6. The Last Battle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys. There is no sex in this chapter. I give it a solid PG rating. Sometimes they just need a break, okay? We'll make up for it next time. Meanwhile, have other forms of intimacy.

Despite losing the proton bombs, the mission to Agamar feels like a win. Still, as the day draws to a close, the tactical droid’s words echo dangerously in Kanan’s head:

“The Jedi rescue is a recurring scenario based upon 132 battles that I have reviewed.” 

Kanan has played out these motions more often than that in his dreams, his allies behind him, his enemies before him. So has Rex, come to think of it. That’s probably why, despite today’s bizarre brand of terror, they’d fallen into the routine easily, playing out the 133rd such battle in the history of the Clone Wars, or the 130 millionth, depending upon how you look at it. Kanan had been comfortable, familiar with the threats facing them. Danger isn’t so bad when you’re used to it. Not at the time it’s unfolding, anyway.

The whole disaster on Agamar had been a scenario for both of them, fighting, blocking, ducking, just another run-through of the motions drilled into their limbs by years of repetitive nightmares. Only this time it ended differently. Better. This time, he has Ezra. 

And so Kanan is fine, cheerful even, for the rest of the day. He confronted his past, kept a level head, and won. He somehow managed to raise a padawan who talked a tactical droid and a clone into becoming allies—and if that’s really more Ezra’s triumph than his own, he plans to take some of the credit for it, anyway. So he eats dinner without wishing for a drink to wash it down. He falls asleep easily. 

But as soon as his conscious mind loses control, all bets are off. In his dreams he’s still fighting, fleeing desperately from enemies that almost catch him over and over as he makes endless impossible escapes at the last moment. 

He wakes with the smell of fried machinery and scorched flesh in his nose, still running, until something blocks his path and he comes to an abrupt halt. 

“Oof!” 

Hera’s voice. She shouldn’t be here; it isn’t safe.

“Kanan?” Ezra. He feels Sabine somewhere nearby, too, concerned but not panicked. The dream has shifted, that disorienting step from one scene into the next that makes perfect sense to a sleeper’s logic. Only it doesn’t make any sense to him. 

“Go,” he says, hoping that he can get them to safety, knowing that’s not how this script works. 

“Hey. You’re awake now. It’s okay.” Hera’s hands are on his chest, pushing hard, and he can’t run anymore without knocking her down. “Go to bed,” she says to the kids. “It’s all right. Go back to bed.” 

He begins to think he may have escaped this time. “What’s going on? Am I asleep?” 

“No, you just woke up. There’s no threat. You’re safe now.” 

His mind latches onto “safe” and “threat,” and he tries to fit them together. “Hera.” 

“Yes.” 

“What’s burning?” 

“Nothing’s burning.” 

“I can smell it.” 

“I can’t. This was a bad one, huh? Your heart’s going a thousand parsecs a minute.” 

“We need to get out of here. Right now.” 

“Kanan. You. Are. On. The. Ghost.” 

That breaks through. “Was I dreaming?” 

“Yes. Nothing’s wrong. You want to walk? We can go walk around outside.” 

He nods, but Hera pauses halfway through lacing her arm with his. “We should get you some pants, at least. Can you wait?” 

He doesn’t know what she means by “wait,” but he’s pretty sure he shouldn’t leave the ship in only his underwear. “Okay.” 

So she leads him back the way he came, then leaves him shivering in the middle of his bunk while she finds his pants. “Sorry, love. Give me twenty seconds, all right? You can count. I’ll be back in twenty seconds. You want me to count out loud with you?” 

“No.” He grits his teeth. “It’s not that bad. I’m all right.” 

In ten seconds her hands are on him again. She presses his pants against his chest, and then, once he’s put them on, a shirt. “Okay, let’s go for a walk.” 

The night air is blissfully cool against his skin. They walk laps around the Ghost, Kanan’s heart still pumping like he’s making the Kessel Run by foot, his legs moving so fast that Hera has to trot at his side to keep up. He’s on Atollon, it’s the middle of the night, the silence means that nobody else is awake in this part of the camp, and he just had a nightmare. That’s all. He hasn’t had an episode like this since the night after they met Rex, and it had been years before that. He’d thought his days of panicking this badly were over.

_ I’ve got to get out,  _ his brain still insists, eyes darting wildly and uselessly for some means of escape. _ I’ve got to get away from here. _ He knows it’s not true, but this knowledge doesn’t help his body’s reaction in the slightest.

“You want to run?” Hera asks. “I’ll jog with you.”

So he does, around and around the Ghost, giving his body something to do with all of that adrenaline until it finally begins to run out. 

“Better?” Hera asks when he slows to a walk. 

“Yeah, I think so.” 

“Ready to go back to bed?” 

“Not quite.” He turns to the Ghost’s lowered ramp, finding it with a foot before taking a few tentative steps up. “I think I’m just going to sit here a while and cool down. I’ll close up the hatch before I come to bed.” He’s okay now, mostly, but maybe going to sleep isn’t the best idea tonight. 

When he sits, Hera plunks onto the ramp next to him. 

“I’m all right now, Hera. I feel fine. You can go back to bed.”

“I know, but I’m going to stay.” 

She is the entire reason he’s not running scared in search of a drink right now: Hera, and the better coping mechanisms he’s developed through years at her side. Before her, the only option he had was to get himself so deadass drunk that the fight didn’t feel unfair when he finally provoked some asshole into hitting him. Now he knows what’s happening and why, and he knows how to make it stop without getting hit in the face or passing out. This is a definite improvement.  _ See?  _ He says to eighteen-year-old Kanan.  _ Things do get better. I promise you, kid.  _

He laces his arm through Hera’s, and she leans her head against his shoulder. “The stars are pretty,” she says. “It’s a nice night.” 

“Weather’s good, too.” 

“Do you want to talk about it?” 

“No.” He sighs. “Not particularly. It’s more or less what you’d expect.” 

“Okay. Want to listen to me complain about squadron assignments, instead?” 

He smiles in spite of himself. “Sure.” 

“Good, because they are a mess right now. I keep telling Commander Tena that it’s better to have fewer teams than it is to send up a squadron at half-strength. I know we don’t have many pilots, but we keep losing more because we are spreading people too thin!” 

“You think we need to disband some groups and go to less shifts, then?” Kanan asks gamely. 

“No, that’s going to exhaust everybody, too. I think we need to cut down on non-essential missions until the new pilots are fully trained.”

“Wow. That bad, huh?” 

“It could be a lot better. And the way they’re running teams is...inefficient.” 

“Have you talked to Sabine about this? She’ll write you a program to generate squadron assignments. You’d make her day.” 

“And have to listen to her yell when Command doesn’t use it? No, thank you. Anyway, I’ve got a rotation worked out. They just want to use their own, which is strictly worse!” 

Kanan kisses the top of her head, grateful to focus on everyday problems, fond of her exasperated certainty in her own judgment—as long as it’s not directed at him, of course. And she does usually have the better way of doing things. Not as often as she thinks, but most of the time. 

“Did you get a chance to catch up on your feed on the way back?” Hera asks, changing the subject. “They released that new Kessel Run album you were looking forward to.” 

“Oh, yeah. That came out late yesterday. I stayed up and listened to it.” 

“How is it?” 

“Sounds like their old stuff. Remember when we were running the blockade on Iakar over and over again?” 

Hera laughs at the memory. “When  _ To the Moon and Back _ was new? Of course I do; we must have listened to that album two hundred times.” 

“And then we got ambushed over Iakari II, and you started screaming ‘Turn that thing  _ off, _ I am trying to fly!”

“And Chopper was so sick of it that he deleted the whole file. I could have dismantled him.” 

“Yeah. You’d hit your head on something during the fight and were bleeding all over the cockpit. You looked scary. If I were Chopper, I would have run.” 

“You did run! You disappeared and came back with another download of the songs in ten minutes, and Chopper started chasing you with the electrical prod.” 

“Good times.” 

“We fried half the sensor array in that fight. I was so mad. I thought that day was awful.” 

“Seems kind of fun looking back, though, doesn’t it?” 

“Yeah. It does.” They sit in silence for a few minutes, each caught in their own version of the same memory. Then Hera asks him, “Ready to go to bed now?” 

“I don’t really know if I’ll go back to bed tonight, Hera. You should go ahead.” 

“I got some sleep before you woke up. I can stay with you.” 

If Hera had already gone to sleep by the time he woke, it must be really late. And there’s not much chance of convincing her to leave when she’s got that tone in her voice. “You want to hang out on top of the Ghost and listen to the new album with me?” he invites, instead.

“Sounds fun. You go up; I’ll be there in a minute.” 

Kanan lowers the maintenance ladder, climbs one rung, and then uses it as a toehold to leap to the top of the Ghost. “Showoff!” Hera calls, keeping her voice low. But once he gets to the top of the ship, he’s careful walking across the bumpy surface. 

Hera climbs up a few minutes later with the uneven gait of someone with only one hand on the ladder. She picks her way across to him just as carefully as he had. Of course; it’s dark. The muffled thump and the whoosh of air by his face mean that she’s shaking something out. The heavy blanket from the cockpit, then. 

“Give me one of your earpieces,” she says. “Let’s not wake the camp.” 

He hands it over and she tucks it into her cap.

“And lie down with me?” 

He stretches out on the blanket and Hera curls into his side, tossing one leg over him and arranging her lekku so she can settle her head on his shoulder. Kanan starts the music, volume low. A trill of bass quetarra opens the first song. Hera raises her head, delighted. 

“Yeah,” he responds to the comment she hasn’t made. “I like it.”

“You ought to play it for Zeb.” 

“Good idea.” 

By the third song they’re pleasantly comfortable, willing to listen without moving or talking. Kanan loses track after that and wakes suddenly when the same steel lament from the first song begins again. He knows without needing to check that Hera is asleep, her weight heavy and loose where she rests on him. How many times has the album played through? 

He feels like bantha dung. Even through the blanket, sleeping on a metal surface isn’t fun. He’s chilled and he’s stiff. Worse yet, one side of his head aches horribly with what he thinks of as a post-panic hangover, and he still feels shocky and unsettled. The galaxy’s only remaining Jedi Knight, nemesis of the Empire, knocked completely off his game by one dream. Well, he can have some caf and swallow a couple of comaren and tough it through this day, and tomorrow will be better. 

Hera stirs against his side. “‘M cold,” she mumbles. Kanan’s shoulder has long ago fallen asleep under the weight of her head, and his arm shoots pins and needles as he brings it up to rub her shoulder. 

“Let’s go inside,” he says. 

“Just a minute.” She yawns and wakes fully. “Did you fall asleep?” 

“Yeah. No more dreams.” 

“Good.” 

Right now, he feels awful—physically worn down and embarrassed to have woken the crew, chilled, with a dry mouth that tastes like old caf. But he’s listening to a good album for the third time ever, and Hera’s lying with him, and the birds are waking up to an Atollon dawn that is not yet too warm. Today is going to be terrible. Ten years from now, though, they’re going to look back fondly and call these the good times. 


	7. Imperial Supercommandos

Kanan could get used to this whole, “Sabine and Ezra are old enough to run their own missions” thing. 

The adults wave the kids goodbye and wait until they jump away in the Phantom 2 before talking.

“Think they’ll be all right?” Zeb asks.

“Sure,” Hera says. “Sabine can handle it.”

Kanan crosses his arms. “Sabine, huh?”

“Ezra cannot handle it, but he’ll think of a genius way out of any mess he gets into.”

Kanan laughs out loud.

“So,” Zeb says. “If nobody needs anything, I’m heading out to the cruiser.”

“Okay.”

“Something going on?” Kanan asks.

“I’m sure I can find something. Probably enough to keep me occupied for a few hours.”

“All right.”

“Say, three hours.”

“Noted. Have fun.”

“Yeah, yeah.” He heads for the hatch. There’s no point in wasting fuel flying smaller ships like the Ghost when they aren’t doing anything. Docked with one of the larger cruisers, it’s one easy step for him to go check out the social life of the ship. ...Unless he ends up cleaning weapons or helping with surveillance, instead. It isn’t exactly R&R hour. He is, very pointedly, taking one for the team.

As soon as the hatch closes behind him, Hera and Kanan burst out laughing. “Three hours,” Kanan says. “You’d better set an alarm.”

“Remember when three hours _wasn’t_ a marathon session?” Hera muses, mock-wistful.

“Yeah, but now your partner is an old man, so we should probably have some lunch and fuel up first, don’t you think?”

“Mmm…” Hera does actually consult her chronometer; Kanan can hear her. “I don’t know. Any time we say we’re going to fool around later instead of seizing the moment, something comes up.”

“You afraid of a distress call from the kids?”

“How hungry are you?”

“Not that hungry.” He reaches out, catching the crash webbing at her hip, and pulls her a little closer. “If it’s necessary to keep the kids safe, I can probably take you to bed instead of having lunch.”

But they don’t go to bed; they go to the common area. The cockpit is a pain in the butt, sometimes literally, and there’s always the danger of bumping something. Bunks are...fine. They’re fine. But they’ve been there, done that. Actually, they’ve been here, too—and everywhere else, at this point—but not in a while

“Planning to snack at the same time?” Kanan teases.

“I thought you looked a little hungry after all.”

“Hmm. Not for food.” He backs her into the dejarik table and tries a kiss. Hera parts her lips readily under his and they take their time, his mask going onto the bench, then her goggles. Kanan slips a finger under her flight cap at the temple, then tugs it far enough to expose an ear. Kissing is a lot more fun if you have a jawline and at least one ear to play with, though he has to be careful or she’ll complain about his kisses being _really loud._ Today, though, she seems satisfied. It doesn’t take long for her to get sick of the table hitting her in the back of the thighs and sit on it. He has to stoop considerably, but that’s a sacrifice he can deal with in exchange for her tongue on his neck.

When she gets tired of him leaning into her, Hera flops back on the table. “Hmm,” Kanan says, “Now _there_ is a sight I’m sorry to miss. In fact…” He has an idea. “...This is going to be fun.”

“What?” she asks, laughing but a little wary of his teasing.

He strokes the side of her face. “I haven’t actually _seen_ you in a long time.” 

Hera turns her face and nuzzles his palm. “I know.”

“I might need to re-learn you.”

She answers in mock-offense. “You think you’ve forgotten me?!”

“Well, it’s been months.” Not so long that he’s forgotten how to loosen the clasps at her collar with one hand, though. There’s the delicate straight line of her collarbone. And the accompanying shiver on Hera’s part as he skims it with his fingers. “What if I don’t remember what the back of your ankle looks like?”

“Ankle?” Hera asks. She’s trying to be skeptical, but her neck is another of those areas that usually gets her going, and the effect she intends is somewhat muddied in the effect he’s having on her.

“Could be.” Another clasp and he’s found her cleavage, made dramatic by the form-fitting leather vest. _That_ has an effect on _him,_ along with the delightful frustration of being able to get only halfway down—her vest is tight enough to block him from a lot of the good stuff. He traces the top of her breast along its collar, fingers skimming under her shirt. 

“Hmm.” She arches into his hand. “So what do you propose?”

Okay, this is fun, but that vest is killing him. He abandons all pretense of being good and works at its fastening with both hands. “When you’re blind, you have to make up for it with other senses. Like touch.”

Hera helps him with her clothes, starting from the bottom and moving up. Their hands meet in the middle. “Touch, huh?” She pulls his hand to her mouth, drawing one finger between her lips and taking the pad between her teeth. Her words are muffled. “Whm about taste?”

“What?” His breath speeds up, and certain other areas are starting to speed up as well. No, he wants her slowly, every piece of her. He takes his finger back, stroking her jaw as he does so. “You’re not blind. You don’t get to taste yet.” But he leans in close, before she can pretend to pout at him, and breathes in her ear. “I want to touch you everywhere.” Then he leans a little more, lets his weight settle against her hips, lets her begin to feel it. “You game?”

A shiver goes through her entire body before she settles into the tension that he recognizes as anticipation. She licks her lips, which he can tell only because his face is right next to hers. He can feel her heartbeat against his body, too, steady as an engine building towards a hyperspace jump. “Yes.”

“Good.” He stands up, considering.

“Kanan Jarrus, you tease.”

“Gotta take it slow. Don’t worry, I think I’ll start at the top. Here, sit up.”

He takes her hand to help her up, then lets go and starts with the middle of her lekku. The tips are too sensitive; unless he takes it slowly, they’ll just make her jump in overstimulation. The base is...too good. She doesn’t get that quite yet. Instead, he clasps them both and runs his hands slowly up and down.

He can’t really see her of course, and he’ll never get that back. Most of the time he can tell where she is and what she’s doing. Part of it is how well he knows Hera—for instance, that little pause and the rustle of her shirt earlier meant she was checking the chronometer on her wrist comm, an easy confirmation of what he already knew she’d do. A big piece of his intuition, though, is the Force. In the same way he knows where an opponent’s strike will come, where their feet move, he knows that right now, Hera’s lips are parted and her eyes closed as she takes in this casual, slow build of pleasure. His memory can fill in a lot of the rest. Add another sense, say touch, and...well, it’s not the same as seeing her. But it’s not a bad substitute.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hmm?”

“We need to get this cap off.”

“Be my guest.”

He knows right where the snaps are, but it takes him a minute to ease it down her lekku, partly because Hera will kill him if he tugs at it and rips a seam. And then he has the wider palate of two entire lekku to work with, which he does, stroking the broad base where they meet her head and scritching at her scalp, behind her ears to the base of her neck. She leans into his touch in creature comfort, though she’d probably prefer his lips right here.

“Are you petting me?”

“Maybe. Do you like it?”

“Depends. You haven’t gotten me purring yet. Keep going; I’ll let you know.”

So he strokes her collarbone again, that light touch that skirts the line between tickling and erotic, then cups a shoulder that fits perfectly into his palm, which he likes much more than he expects to. Down her arms, muscles small but compact and strong, Hera shivering every so often with desire. Her breath comes heavy but steady. Good, that’s what he wants—Hera hot enough to enjoy even the more subtle parts of this approach, but the fire banked enough that she doesn’t get impatient before he’s done. 

He sits on the table next to her and takes one arm into his lap, stroking down a corded forearm to her improbably delicate wrist. He forgets—because she’s tall for most of the women of his acquaintance and she’s not particularly light, given the muscle she’s put on under his training—how thin her frame is. She still laughingly refers to herself as a “skinny Ryloth kid,” but these places where he can still feel her smallness are...unexpected. Kanan swallows against the sudden rush of affection and protectiveness. 

He lingers on the underside of her wrist, stroking the pulse point for long seconds because her breathing is getting heavier and heavier, her blood pumping faster under his fingers. But you can’t count on Hera to sit quietly, and her wrist flexes under his fingers, brushing her fingertips naughtily against the erection that he’s been trying to take slow. It jumps under her touch like the strings on a plucked quetarra. “I could do the touching for a while,” she offers, fingers climbing him, looking for purchase.

He takes a deep breath and calls on calming techniques. “If you do that, I never get to the back of your ankle,” he reminds her.

“It’s the same as it was.” 

He takes her hand in his again. “Humor me.”

“If you want.” She settles back, lying down on the table. She’ll be closing her eyes on that sigh. “I just don’t want you to miss out on all the fun.”

He strokes each finger in turn. “I think you’ve determined that I’m having fun, too.”

Another sigh. “This is nice.”

Kanan folds her arm on top of her body, leaving her hand tantalizingly low on her abdomen. Hera’s gone boneless, letting him do as he pleases. “Good, because I missed a spot.”

He runs his hands down her legs, a reconnaissance mission—yes, she’s even taken off the boots and socks. Then he comes back up and lingers over her thighs, and oh, he’s been waiting for this for a while: the swell of her ass and the strong muscles in her back, then the impossible length in the front when he strokes from hip (that makes her shiver in pleasure) to knee. “Well…”

“What?”

“You’re still made out of about 70 percent legs.”

She laughs, her voice a rich peal. 

He lets himself get a good handful of thigh. “Hmm…” he considers.

“What?”

“Make a muscle.”

She does.

“Not quite as much here as I remember.”

He can feel her irritation try to stir through her arousal, but it doesn’t quite make it. “What?” she repeats.

“Somebody’s been slacking off on the weights.”

She does raise her head this time. Her weight shifts to an elbow as she considers him. “Somebody’s drill sergeant took a break.”

“Hera,” he lectures, but it’s an old conversation at this point in their tenure as partners. “These—” that gives him another opportunity to grab her thigh, which is still, to be fair, delightfully muscled, “—are the strongest part of your body. These are what save your life if it comes to hand-to-hand combat.”

“Oh?” she asks, haughty, teasing. “Well, I can still do this.” 

Then she scissors her legs around him and flips him right off the table.

He lets her.

Hera sits up and peers down at him from her superior vantage point. “Don’t you do the wise Jedi master lecture with me.” She’s smiling, though; he’d bet money that she’s smiling.

“I’m not wrong.”

“Do you want to have sex with me, or not?”

“Very much yes.”

“Less lecturing and more touching, then."

“I can do that. I _was_ doing that.” He stands in front of her again, between her knees, and starts with her lekku again, stroking from top to bottom and this time stopping to tease the tips with the lightest of touches. When she’s squirming with the desire for more, he stops, caresses from base to tip again, and starts the process over.

The fourth time she huffs out, frustrated, “Kanan.”

“Hera,” he returns.

“If you do it one more time you will never get to my ankle because you will have to fuck me immediately.” Her voice has gone from rough to rich, low in her chest. He swears he can feel it vibrate in his abdomen.

His heartbeat ticks up a notch to match hers. “Hera.” He relents on the lekku. “Could you...talk to me?”

And _this_ pause would be Hera grinning at him. “I think I could handle that.” 

He stops teasing her and moves on, tracing easy circles on her chest, just under the collarbone, where he can almost feel her ribs.

“Lower,” she murmurs. And: “I want to feel you next to me.”

So he stretches out beside her obligingly and strokes the outside of her breast—down, up. Down. Up.

“Mmm, yes, like that.” She turns her face into his shoulder and now he really _can_ feel the rich contralto of her voice. “I want your hands on me.”

This...this is unfair. She’s winding him up far faster than he did her. But she’s got a head start on him, and he did ask for this. He moves his touch to the underside of her breast, where he _can_ feel her ribs, and then back to the outside curve, getting a tantalizing hint of its weight.

Hera arches. “Mmm, Kanan, please!”

And just like that he’s gone from “pretty ready” to “completely hard.” He runs a flat hand down the outside of her ribcage, then leans in and brings his hand back up, squeezing—Force, she’s still the perfect handful, but has she lost a little weight?—and then taking a nipple into his mouth with the deepest of pleasure.

The moan Hera lets out is long and satisfied.

He does, for the record, make it to that ankle, Hera narrating for him the entire way, but it’s a less leisurely pursuit than her top half had been, and by the time he tries to start on her heel, she’s panting and moaning steadily. “Kanan, please. Enough. I want your hips on mine.”

So he strips off pants and boots and obliges, climbing onto the table with her and lowering his hips to hers—just enough weight to be good, not enough to crush her.

Enough, apparently, to give her room to wriggle against him in a way that’s going to make him come all over her thigh if they wait much longer. “Good,” she says in that rich voice, and then, a quiet suggestion in his ear, “Fuck me. Fuck me, love, I want you inside me.”

He doesn’t have to be told twice.

They’re both wound tight. Kanan closes his eyes and fucks Hera steadily while her orgasm rolls over her, listening to her cries go from sharp and needy to guttural and satisfied. She sings the scale of her own climax right next to his ear, and that pushes him over the edge, four thrusts after she’s relaxed and then five, before he pushes deep inside her and spills with a groan.

Kanan rolls her on top of him without withdrawing and she rides him a little, experimentally, but they’re both well satisfied. They catch their breaths and let their bodies cool.

“You, my love, are a very good lay.” Hera kisses him on the lips and stands heavily, offering a hand and bracing herself to pull him up after her.

“Lunch?” he asks.

“Lunch.”

They get dressed. Hera puts together grilled cheese sandwiches. Kanan opens a package of soup and dumps it into a pan. Hera adds the requisite water and heats it.

“Did you stir it?” Kanan asks.

“Yes, I stirred it,” she says, a hint of annoyance in her voice.

“Okay, get the Nubian herb mix and Zeb’s fancy salt. You want about two and a half milliliters.

“How about I just shake some in?”

“Hera, will you please measure it? For me?”

She admits to a bad habit of eyeballing food and overseasoning it, but her skeptical, “Hmm” tells him she isn’t too fond of having a backseat cook. “We have got to get you up to speed in the kitchen again.”

“Hey, I like package soup! Stir,” he says, and _clink_ goes the spoon as she does it without thinking.

“Yes, but having you hovering over my every move isn’t exactly fun.”

“And my cooking is delicious.”

“And your cooking is delicious.”

They eat companionably, full of warm food and sated on each other. It’s been less than two hours since Zeb left, so they contemplate their next move.

“We could turn on a show.”

“Yes, but what?”

“Whatever you want to watch. Or listen to.”

“Nubian Holiday,” he suggests immediately.

“Hmm.” Her tone is distinctly skeptical.

“Dathomir Survivor.” This suggestion he makes just to irritate her.

“Really?”

“All right, well, I’ve registered my votes. You have to decide.”

“Something…” she considers, “...not too heavy. But not junk, either.”

“The program you are searching for does not exist.”

“I had five ideas when I was flying with Phoenix Squadron yesterday! Now I can’t think of any of them.” She contemplates for a moment before giving up. “Oh, well. Seems like a waste of time anyway, doesn’t it?”

“You have other plans?”

“Not yet.” She sighs and stretches. Some joint cracks.

“Maybe I should realign your spine.”

“I would not have a problem with that. I think my tailbone’s bruised from the edge of the table.”

“Poor Hera.”

“Worth it, though.”

“Have I ever told you how incredibly, incredibly hot you are?”

“You can’t see me.”

“Can’t I?”

“Hmm. Kanan?”

“Yes?”

“We probably shouldn’t waste this time.”

“Do you have ideas, then?”

“Maybe.” Her bare foot slides up his leg and perches tantalizingly in his lap.

He is so deeply satisfied he isn’t sure he could finish again, even forty five minutes afterwards. But he’s pretty sure—increasingly sure by the moment—that he could start. Sitting across the table from him, undoubtedly twirling her spoon in the remains of her soup, Hera is starting to send out signals again—not a desperate, burning desire as earlier, just lazy, half-interested stirrings. And then there’s that foot, which refuses to hold still. He takes her hand (finding it is not difficult when he’s as attuned to her as right now), and swirls his thumb over her palm in unmistakeable invitation. And now she is definitely interested, if that hitch in her breath and in her Force signature are any indication.

Certain regions of his body hitch in response. She’s got to be able to feel that.

He brings her hand to his lips, kisses her palm. “Want to go again?” 

“Let’s see...” she says, long and satisfied. The syllables roll off her tongue. It’s not exactly an accent—nobody can get that out of her unless she’s just been speaking Ryl—but it’s...something. Hera cursing out a low-paid guard sounds like music. Her bedroom voice could probably get him off even if he wasn’t touching her at the time. “Convince me.”

So he runs his fingers up her arm just like earlier, and when he gets to the elbow she shivers in pleasure. “Oh,” he realizes, “You’re in _that_ mood.” He could actually touch the back of her ankle and have her squirming. 

And now he is definitely interested, like probably should adjust himself or unclasp his pants interested.

“Kanan Jarrus, wipe that smug look off your face.”

“Sorry, Hera, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Can’t see it.”

“Oh, don’t give me that. You never could see it and you do know what I’m ta—t—hah…” And that’s the side of her neck. She’s projecting through the Force now; he wonders if she knows it. (She might.) 

His stomach clenches in response. He removes the mischievous foot, sits beside her, and pulls her onto his lap. “You _do_ want to go again, then?”

“Mm, yes. Not here; that’s a waste of opportu—hnnn, Kanan I can’t think when you do that.” 

He nuzzles her shoulder. “Do you need to think?” 

“I’m planning.”

He catches her lips in a slow kiss and when they come up for air, Hera says, “Not here.”

“Where?”

“How about the cockpit? We need to re-christen it; it’s probably been two years.” 

“I like the way you think.” 

She rises from his lap abruptly and pulls him down the hall.

It is less intense this time than before, but with the edge taken off, each of them has the stamina to trade slow, easy pleasure for a long, long time. When Kanan finally finishes, sprawled in the copilot’s chair with Hera straddling him, he holds her hips and lets her ride her own pleasure out one last time. Then they flop bonelessly together. At some point that becomes uncomfortable and he spreads out the big rug that’s up there to keep her warm on long, low-fuel flights. The floor isn’t as soft as a bunk, but there’s a lot more room. Both of them stretch out, half-dressed and tangled in clothes, just to let the sweat dry for a moment. Just to get comfortable.

It’s a lot longer than a moment when the hatch bangs open. Hera jerks awake, lifting her head from his chest, and Kanan wonders if he’s been napping lightly or meditating. “I’m back!” Zeb announces loudly. “Just so you know!”

“Karabast!” Hera’s hopping around trying to untangle the one leg of her pants that she’s not already wearing, and that thud means she’s just fallen on her rear. He tries not to laugh. “Shush!” she tells him. “Where even _are_ your pants?”

“I do not know.”

A wad of cloth and belt hits him heavily in the chest. That tiny beep means she’s locked the cockpit door. Zeb climbs the ladder to the crew level and they freeze, but then his heavy footsteps head aft towards the common area instead.

“I can’t find my cap.”

“I think it was...inside my pants...somehow,” he apologizes, handing it to her.

The door to the common area opens with a hiss and Zeb’s disappointed groan. “You had _three hours,”_ he calls, “And you didn’t have time to do the dishes?”


	8. Iron Squadron

**Spectre1 is initiating a text communication**

Spectre1 (09:21): Status check 

Spectre2 (09:22): These children are driving me insane 

Spectre1 (09:22): Our children? 

Spectre2 (09:23): No, shockingly

Spectre2 (09:23): Let’s just say Spectre 3 is one of the more sensible people here

Spectre1 (09:23): Wow

Spectre1 (09:27): Spectre 4 says good luck

Spectre2 (09:29): Thanks. How’s the text-to-speech working? 

Spectre1 (09:29): So far, so good   
  


...

**Spectre2 is initiating a text communication**

Spectre2 (16:09): Status check 

Spectre1 (16:15): I fear to say it’s going smoothly

Spectre2 (16:15): Because then something is bound to go wrong

Spectre1 (16:15): You know me so well. We’ll be packed in a couple of hours and the transports can take it from there

Spectre2 (16:16): Are you bringing anyone back on the shuttle? 

Spectre1 (16:16): I don’t think so

Spectre1 (16:16): How are things up there? 

Spectre2 (16:17): Well...they could be worse

Spectre2 (16:17): No hostiles right now

Spectre2 (16:17): But they won’t let us fix their hyperdrive

Spectre2 (16:17): And they think this is all some kind of game

Spectre1 (16:18): You can’t save them if they don’t want to be saved

Spectre2 (16:18): I know. That’s why I’m frustrated

Spectre1 (16:21): Spectre 4 says he’ll bust some heads for you when we get back

Spectre2 (16:21): Tell him thank you. It’s nice to know someone cares

Spectre1 (16:22): What are you doing right now? 

Spectre2 (16:22): Lots of hurry up and wait

Spectre1 (16:22): Do you want me to leave you alone? 

Spectre2 (16:22): No, but aren’t you busy? 

Spectre1 (16:25): Spectre 4’s going to finish up

Spectre1 (16:25): You have plans for later? 

Spectre2 (16:26): I’m beginning to think this will last all day. Just mission reports. Work

Spectre2 (16:26): I can do those in the common room and be with the rest of you too, though

Spectre2 (16:26): You?

Spectre1 (16:27): Remember that time on Rion’s moons

Spectre1 (16:27): You want to go back there sometime?

Spectre2 (16:29): Put your earpiece in

Spectre1 (16:29): Done

Spectre2 (16:29): Can Z hear the text-to-speech? 

Spectre1 (16:29): No

Spectre2 (16:29): Sure?

Spectre1 (16:29): Double checked

Spectre2 (16:30): Are you asking me if I want to go to Rion?

Spectre2 (16:30): So to speak?

Spectre1 (16:30): Later today?

Spectre2 (16:30): Why wait?

Spectre1 (16:31): What? 

Spectre2 (16:31): Why not go right now? 

Spectre1 (16:31): Now? 

Spectre1 (16:31): Where is everyone else? 

Spectre2 (16:32): They’re in the common area. I’m in the cockpit keeping watch

Spectre2 (16:32): I can do both things at once

Spectre1 (16:33): Can I use the voice comm? 

Spectre2 (16:33): I’ll lock the door and comm you   
  


…

**Spectre2 is initiating a voice communication**

“Hi, stranger.” 

“Are you serious about this, H— Spectre 2?” 

“I need a distraction from whatever’s happening in the rest of this ship.” 

“Hold on, I’m heading into one of the shelters… All right. I can distract you. Want to make plans for later?” 

“Yes.”

“In the cockpit?” 

“Why not? It’s easy to picture. Pilot’s seat?” 

“No, copilot’s. You never let me sit in the pilot’s seat when you’re there, too.” 

“Do you _ want  _ to?” 

“No, no. I like it when you fly. Leave your clothes on.” 

“Risqué, Kanan.” 

“Hey, reserve your judgment! Listen to what I have planned. I want to touch you through them.”

“Oh. I like that.” 

“I thought you might.” 

“With the tips of your fingers.” 

“Yes.” 

“We should  _ do _ this later, not just talk about it.” 

“Later today.” 

“Especially the part where you’re pressing your fingers against me.” 

“Until you’re worked up and I can feel how much you want me.” 

“This is starting to get good. I want to sit on your lap so I can grind back against you.” 

“With my hand between your legs.” 

“Press me down hard.” 

“Hera, can you put your hand between your legs right now?” 

“Probably n— Hold on a minute.” 

“Okay.” 

“Son of a bantha!”

“What?” 

“I just heard a crash and now there’s yelling. Got to go.” 

“Roger that. Later, then.”    
  


...   
  


**Spectre2 is initiating a text communication**

Spectre2 (22:48): Do you have your earpiece in? 

Spectre1 (22:48): You know I do

Spectre2 (22:48): Just checking

Spectre2 (22:49): So about the Rion thing tonight…?

Spectre1 (22:50): I can’t believe I’m saying this, but…

Spectre2 (22:50): Sleep? 

Spectre1 (22:50): Yes

Spectre2 (22:50): Oh, good

Spectre1 (22:51): I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not

Spectre2 (22:52): I wouldn’t be sarcastic about this. You don’t have to say yes every time I ask. We’ll make a date for tomorrow

Spectre1 (22:53): Ezra wants to know why we’re messaging when we’re in the same room

Spectre2 (22:53): I heard him. I’m standing right here

…   
  
****

**Spectre2 is initiating a text communication**

Spectre2 (14:01): I just thought you should know

Spectre2 (14:01): I gave Ezra an order that he followed yesterday

Spectre1 (14:05): Congratulations

Spectre2 (14:05): Thank you. Isn’t there a stipend for that? 

Spectre1 (14:05): It’s called a bet, Hera. And yes, I’ll pay up

Spectre1 (14:05): It’s a lot easier to keep him in line when you can literally demote him

Spectre1 (14:06): Have I told you how sexy I found that by the way? 

Spectre2 (14:06): You have not, but I’ll make a note of it. Demotions are sexy

Spectre2 (14:06): Wait. Do you have your earpiece in, or is everyone listening? 

Spectre1 (14:06): Why Captain Syndulla, I love it when you ask me what I’m wearing

Spectre2 (14:06): Is that a yes? 

Spectre1 (14:07): Earpiece in. Meditating. Nobody else here

Spectre2 (14:07): I’m sorry, love. You didn’t have to let me interrupt

Spectre1 (14:07): I don’t mind. Thought you were in a meeting, though

Spectre2 (14:07): I am

Spectre1 (14:08): Hera! Naughty! Pay attention to the Admiral

Spectre2 (14:08): Did you just call me naughty? 

Spectre1 (14:08): Are you raising your eyebrow at me in the middle of the meeting? 

Spectre1 (14:08): Because people are going to notice that face

Spectre2 (14:10): There are 200 people in here. They’re not going to notice anything

Spectre1 (14:11): You’re bored, then? 

Spectre2 (14:11): So bored. We started with surveillance flight schedules, but now everybody’s just explaining how much they appreciate everyone else

Spectre2 (14:11): They are 30 minutes into that, Kanan

Spectre2 (14:11): This is the galaxy’s most polite rebellion

Spectre1 (14:12): Sorry the interesting part is over

Spectre1 (14:12): Like surveillance flight schedules

Spectre2 (14:12): I’m glad you like teasing me, but I really commed to ask you…

Spectre2 (14:13): If you were up for a trip to Rion

Spectre2 (14:13): Right now

Spectre1 (14:13): You’re skipping out of the meeting

Spectre2 (14:14): No. We can comm

Spectre1 (14:14): Oh

Spectre1 (14:14): Yes

Spectre1 (14:14): Please

Spectre1 (14:14): Are you serious? Aren’t you sitting with a bunch of officers?

Spectre2 (14:15): I’ve got to admit, it adds a certain element of danger

Spectre1 (14:15): Which you like

Spectre2 (14:17): I’m not going to finish or anything

Spectre2 (14:17): The meeting will be over eventually

Spectre2 (14:17): And then I’ll come back to the ship

Spectre2 (14:18): But time is short

Spectre2 (14:18): And I thought it might be a good idea to get a head start

Spectre1 (14:19): I love the way you think. What are you wearing? 

Spectre2 (14:19): Seriously? 

Spectre1 (14:19): Because I’m wearing pants that are starting to get too tight

Spectre2 (14:21): I love your tight pants, but I could help you out of those

Spectre1 (14:22): Yes, but

Spectre1 (14:22): First I have to stop laughing

Spectre1 (14:22): You know I’m hearing all of this in the automated comm voice, right?

Spectre2 (14:23): I take it back. Sex is off

Spectre1 (14:23): What was that? Text to speech must have messed up

Spectre2 (14:24): Funny, I’m getting your messages just fine

Spectre1 (14:24): Didn’t catch that

Spectre2 (14:25): I rescind my offer of sexual congress

Spectre1 (14:25): Ouch

Spectre1 (14:27): Hera? 

Spectre1 (14:32): ??

Spectre1 (14:34): We’re almost out of the Spiran caf. You sure you don’t want to make a stop by Rion later?

Spectre1 (14:35): So to speak? 

Spectre1 (14:42): You want me to comm and get you out of the meeting?

Spectre2 (14:42): Yes

...

  
**Spectre1 is initiating a voice communication**

“Spectre 1 to Spectre 2.” 

“Spectre 2 here. What’s up?” 

“Are you busy? We could use you back at the Ghost.” 

“Is everyone all right?” 

“Yes. Minor wiring emergency, and I can’t find Sabine. I think you guys fried something yesterday. It smells like burning.” 

“I’ll be right there. … … So sorry. No, not an electrical fire yet. I’ll go catch it before it starts. Yes, it’ll be fine. You too. Congratulations on the commendation.” 

“Sorry to pull you from your meeting, Hera.” 

“It’s all right. We were winding up anyway...” 

“...Are you walking yet?” 

“...Okay, I’m out the door. Thanks for rescuing me.” 

“Any time. You want me to talk to you on the way back to the ship? Is  _ your  _ earpiece on?” 

“Hold on, I’ll switch from wrist to headphones. ...Switched.” 

“Just to be clear, you’re coming back here so we can have sex, right?” 

“That’s the plan. I’ve been secretly nursing a crush on you since our talk yesterday.” 

“Since yesterday, huh?” 

“Let’s leave our clothes on and make out for a while.” 

“I’m all right with that if I can open your collar and pull you halfway out of the vest.” 

“Yes. That’s a good idea.” 

“But later I want to taste you.” 

“I should shower first.” 

“Don’t shower. The ship is empty, but I have no idea when everyone’s getting back. I’ll make sure the blanket is in the cockpit.” 

“Not the cockpit. Somewhere with more room.” 

“Any ideas?” 

“I want to push you on the floor and climb on you.”

“That’s a good idea. You be on top and I’ll consider it part of your strength training today.” 

“Way to kill the mood, Kanan.” 

“Are you going to do that thing where you slide against me with your underwear on, or are you going to take them off?” 

“I hadn’t planned that far.” 

“Because if you leave them on, I could do that thing where I’m almost inside you, but they’re in the way, and then I could slip my fingers in and pull them to the side…” 

“That is _ much  _ more like the talk I’m looking for.” 

“How far away are you? Nevermind; I hear you at the ramp.”    
  


...

**Spectre5 is initiating a text communication**

Spectre5 (16:03): THE HOLD? 

Spectre5 (16:03): I’m assuming you’re in the hold because you’ve locked the rest of us out of the ship.

Spectre5 (16:04): And we’re at the ramp.

Spectre5 (16:04): Waiting to get in.

Spectre5 (16:04): Right now.

Spectre5 (16:04): Kanan

Spectre5 (16:04): Hera

Spectre5 (16:04): KANAN

Spectre5 (16:05): You’ve got 60 seconds before I hit the override.

Spectre5 (16:05): Are you reading this? 

Spectre5 (16:05): 60 seconds. 

Spectre5 (16:06): Chopper is here.

Spectre5 (16:06): And he’s not happy.

Spectre5 (16:06): Update: 10 seconds   
  
...

**Spectre5 is initiating a text communication**

Spectre5 (16:20): You have 2 rooms! 

Spectre5 (16:20): TWO! 

Spectre5 (16:20): ROOMS!

Spectre1 (16:23): This is the first time we have ever not answered our comms for you while otherwise occupied

Spectre5 (16:24): Wait

Spectre5 (16:24): When did you?

Spectre5 (16:25): Nevermind. I don’t want to know.    
  
…

  
**Spectre1 is initiating a text communication**

Spectre1 (23:08): Are you going to bed? 

Spectre2 (23:09): No. I told Chop I’d monitor these scans while they run and give him a break

Spectre2 (23:09): It’s penance

Spectre1 (23:10): Sounds like a blast

Spectre1 (23:10): Want to go somewhere? You know, so to speak

Spectre2 (23:10): Sabine would kill us 

Spectre1 (23:11): Come on. Let’s go somewhere


	9. The Wynkathu Job

Hera is Pissed. Off. 

She’s angry because Ezra has brought Azmorigan onto her ship, angry because Azmorigan claimed to _own_ her still, and even angrier that when he made this statement not one member of her crew jumped up and hit him in the jaw. Sure, she’s spent the past few years training them _not_ to defend her from the many, many offhand comments that are not worth their time of day, but something about this smacks of convenient laziness.

Mostly she’s angry that none of them has even noticed her fury.

She’s every kind of done with Azmorigan, and they should have kept her from having to see him ever again because that’s just _common kriffing courtesy_ when some sleemo thinks he can literally _buy_ you for the price of a pig. 

_Be sensible_ , says the little voice in her mind that usually keeps her from lapsing into melodrama. _He didn’t hurt you—didn’t even make a dint in your self-confidence._

 _But_ , says the voice that has kept her well aware of her own worth in all the years since she left Ryloth, _the fact that they all assume you’re all right, that they haven’t considered that being sold into slavery might make an impact on you…_ that Kanan and Ezra and Sabine and Zeb all get to be hurt, and she’s just supposed to be _fine_ … Well, she has been fine up until now, but that hurts her feelings.

She’s also angry that they’re right. Azmorigan can help, and rejecting proton torpedoes because of her own grudges, or making a minor incident out to be worse than it is, would be...petty. Petty and counterproductive. So instead she does the mission, but she gets mad. And not at Azmorigan, who is so clearly a son of a bantha that she can’t expect him to be anything else— at her crew, who should know better but don’t. And especially at Kanan, even though he’s the most sympathetic, because he is also the only one listening. 

Aaaand there he is, having just seen the rest of their crew off to the container transport. “I know what you’re doing,” he says, “but Ezra’s got to learn for himself that Hondo’s not the friend he appears to be.” 

_Yeah_ , Hera thinks, _by getting me sold again? Live and learn, right?_

Kanan puts a comforting hand on her arm.

“Maybe you shouldn’t touch me right now,” she suggests. 

…

When they finally kick Hondo and Azmorigan off the Ghost, the two are arguing over who gets ownership of Melch, the Ugnaut they brought with them.

“Eh, he’ll be fine,” Ezra tells the crew.

Hera wants to say, _You don’t know that_. She wants to start a dialogue about privilege and considering other people’s points of view and how little it can take to send someone’s whole life off the lanes. Instead, she swallows down the scream that’s building in her chest for just long enough to tell him, “Go to your room.”

The look he gives her is utterly disbelieving. “What did I do? I’m not seven, you can’t just—”

“Go. To. Your. ROOM!” she yells, her voice rising enough to echo off the hold’s interior plating by that last word.

“You’re _welcome_ for the torpedoes!” he yells back.

And that is _it_ for Hera. “Ezra Bridger,” she threatens, taking a step towards him, “If you do not start using your brain before you use your mouth—” 

But before she can get out another word—and oh boy, does she have plenty of words for him—Kanan has grabbed Ezra by the back of the collar and half-dragged him through the door towards the crew quarters. “Hey!” Ezra protests.

They can all hear the response, delivered in a low tone of careful control: “I have not won an argument with that woman in nine years. What makes you think today is going to be your day?”

Chopper _whump-whumps_ in laughter, but Sabine and Zeb hastily—guiltily—disappear into corners of the ship, leaving Hera alone on the gangplank above the hold, staring down at lots and lots of proton torpedoes. She takes a deep breath, and then two more. They’ve accomplished a huge objective with very little loss. She should really go talk to Ezra more calmly; flying off the handle hasn’t helped anything.

But when she gets to the door of his room—he _did_ go to his room—she can hear Kanan already talking to him. She doesn’t mean to eavesdrop… well, at first. After that she’s listening very much on purpose, because they’re talking about her, anyway. 

Ezra says something—it sounds like “I thought that went well.”

Kanan’s voice is clearer. “What is your problem?”

“What is _your_ problem?”

“You think this is all a joke?”

Hera takes a step closer. 

“No, it’s not a joke, Kanan, it’s a success. I don’t get why you and Hera have to be so cranky. Like, you’re not snobs about Vizago. Hondo might be a little unconventional, but so are we. And yeah, he’s greedy, but it’s not like we can’t handle him.” 

“You don’t see the problem with bringing a man who thinks he owns Hera—who once asked her to ‘change into something a little more comfortable’ to serve him—onto her ship?!” 

“Hondo didn’t do that.”

“I am TALKING about AZMORIGAN.”

“Well—” Ezra searches for words, still frustrated, looking for some defense. There’s a long, long silence. Hera shifts from foot to foot, dignity reasserting itself—she really shouldn’t be listening. Finally he says, in a much smaller voice that’s still trying not to be wrong, “Could you just leave me alone to think for a while?”

To his credit, Kanan says only, “Sure.” And then he’s walking out the door before Hera can move, bumping into her, stifling his yelp of surprise so Ezra won’t hear. He gives her a watery smile then takes a large, careful step to the other side of the hallway—she’s made her boundaries very clear today, and he’s going out of his way to respect them.

“Kanan,” she says quietly, before he can walk away.

He turns towards her, questioning.

“You can touch me now.”

Gratitude expands in her chest when he wraps his arms around her, hugging her tightly to him, and that’s the reason for the two or three tears that sneak out.

“You all right?” he asks.

“Yes.”

He cocks his head to the side in that confused stance, probably because she’d seemed a half-step from losing all control the last time they talked. “Good. You...want some caf?” 

“I think I do.”

Zeb’s in the common room when they enter with their arms laced together, but he jumps up with a bowl of cereal in his hand. “Good time to get some training in.”

“Not in the cargo bay with those torpedoes!” Sabine shouts from the galley.

“Okay, okay. You want to come help me check on them, then?”

Sabine emerges from the galley with a slab of flatbread rolled around some leftover meat. Post-mission snack.

“Do _not_ get crumbs on the torpedoes,” Hera tells her.

Sabine gives her a look of contempt that Hera thoroughly deserves—as if Sabine doesn’t know how to handle explosives. 

Zeb stands with his bowl, and Hera can’t shake the feeling that they’re getting out of her firing range. She’s fine with that. Kanan finds the caf, he measures the grounds by touch, and he’s carefully pouring it into the brewer by the time they both leave. And Chopper is...Force knows where. And Ezra’s in his room feeling guilty, which is good. Hmm…

The timer on the caf beeps, so Hera gets up to fill the cups, which is easier than worrying about Kanan overfilling and burning his hand. Kanan slides into the booth first, giving her a choice—to sit next to him or across from him. She sidles up close. Today has been hard, it’s true, but not as hard as a lot of other days. And she can count on both hands the number of times she’s felt both seen and looked after the way she does right now. Every single one of those times the person seeing her was Kanan.

“This is nice,” he says, still surprised, draping an arm around her. “You seem to be feeling a lot better.”

“Kanan, thank you—for talking to Ezra. For _yelling_ at Ezra. That means a lot.”

He shrugs awkwardly. “That’s...my job.”

“Well, you’re good at it.”

“Yeah, I’m the expert on yelling at Ezra.” They drink their caf companionably. “Hungry?” Kanan asks. All of them are always starving after a mission, but she and Kanan haven’t done much more than sit in the ship, for all the day’s stress. Is she hungry? She considers. Sabine and Zeb in the hold purposely staying out of the way, Chopper, who is probably done with her dramatics; she doubts she’ll see him until after she’s slept. Ezra holed away in his room… Oh, does he know that he doesn’t really have to stay in there? She’ll tell him later.

“Not really. I could use a shower,” she finally answers. “Could you use a shower?”

He pauses, still trying to figure out her mood. “...Probably?”

He is so sweet when he’s off-guard. She laces their fingers together, but Kanan shakes his head. “Hera, you’re going to need to spell it out for me a little more. I know today was rough, and you said you didn’t want to be touched, and it seems like that’s not what’s going on now…”

“Change of heart,” she supplies. “This is absolutely an invitation.”

“You’re up for this?”

“Nobody owns me,” she says, a non-sequitur.

“Yeah, I know that.”

“My body is _mine.”_

“So…?”

“So I can do whatever I want with it.”

“Oh.” Now he’s caught on.

“And what I want is to feel good. ...That is, if you’re game.”

He puts his mug down on the table so fast that he misjudges and it hits with a little bang. “Let’s go.”

They’re both laughing conspiratorially by the time she drags him into the fresher and locks the door.

The Ghost’s shower is neither sexy nor luxurious. It is, in fact, little more than a nozzle with a drain in the floor underneath it. Turn it on full blast, though, and the fresher steams up nicely, the one place on the ship that gets warm without adjusting the atmo controls. And warm is a nice thing to be when your lover has his face between… Whew. Slow down, Syndulla.

They fumble with their own clothes and each other’s, Hera doing three-fourths of the work and spending a fun few moments nuzzling certain body parts when she’s on her knees stripping off Kanan’s pants. Absolutely no mouth involvement yet, of course. He has to work his way to that. 

He sucks in a tight breath. “I thought I was supposed to be the one doing that.”

She tucks both of their clothes into the tiny cabinet, the one place they won’t get wet, and tosses her leather armor and their wrist comms into the common room before locking the door again. Kanan turns the shower on with one practiced flick of his wrist and it’s hot by the time he backs her into it and soaps up his hands. For that matter, so is she. 

Kanan takes his time washing her collarbone and running the backs of his knuckles up her neck with frustrating gentleness before skimming his fingertips back down the same path and circling her breast. And circling again. He’s playing with the suds, she realizes. Then he tweaks her nipple lightly, and the moan she lets out is all but vengeful. _My body,_ she thinks. _It is here to make_ me _feel good._

Of course, she doesn’t mind sharing, especially with someone so deserving. A little soap on her own hands and she’s running them down his chest. Unlike her, Kanan has only a few really erogenous zones, so she doesn’t waste much time before soaping his balls—there, now he’ll smell nice and clean for what she has planned later— and grasping his cock, thumb and forefinger around the base. Well, hello. He’s gotten into this fast. She’d better get moving if she wants to feel— Yes, there. She can work him quickly like this, her lathered hand sliding from base to tip, again and again. He jumps under her touch and makes those little sounds in the back of his throat, and now he’s much more of a handful than he was before. 

...And imitating her, his hands grasping the base of her lekku and running all the way down to the tips before slipping off with a delightful little jolt of sensation. _Yes,_ she thinks, _touch there._ She makes her own throaty sound by way of encouragement.

They take their time stroking each other, both knowing exactly how long they can take before the hot water runs out. Hera’s never going to come this way, but that just means she can enjoy the steady, soothing feeling of his hands on her lekku for a long time. Kanan, however, is going to burst in her hand if she keeps this up for much longer, and that’s not fair to him. She backs him against the wall—technically, it’s more of a lean, not even a step to the other side of the shower—and substitutes her hip for her hand, trapping his erection between them. “Good,” he approves, so she starts to slide.

And there’s his thigh slipping between hers, spreading her so that the coarse hair of his leg rubs against sensitive spots. Eagerly, she rocks the both of them. Kanan hoists her up a little too rough, hands on her ass, and she realizes that she’s flown him as far as she can this way. He’s so hard it has to be frustrating. Time to move on.

He doesn’t really protest when she slides to her knees, just presses his back against the durasteel plating and says, “No, you first.” 

“Nope.” She wraps her hand around him again—he is really sticking out at the most provocative angle—and licks the salt from his tip before the shower can get it.

“Hera—” he says tightly, but she has ulterior motives. There is no position for actual sex in this fresher than won’t leave a bruise on her rear—they’ve tried everything—and if he’s taken care of, well, she’ll certainly get hers after that.

Besides, pressing her lips to his erection in a little kiss and then slipping him deep into her mouth is _such_ a turn-on, and she might as well stoke her own fire a little more while it’s burning.

He swallows, the lump in his throat bobbing as he does so. His eyes are closed, head tilted back against the shower wall, hair wet and dark on his shoulders. Oh yes, she’s still burning.

And he’s panting as she slides him into her mouth again, tongue working the vein on the underside of his cock then dancing around the sides. For long, beautiful minutes she moves against him, warm water falling on her face, until her mouth fills up with her own saliva and she swallows reflexively with him deep in her throat.

“Hera, I’m going to come,” he forces out, and she pulls off of him with just a little of his taste in her mouth and finishes him in her fist, fascinated by the taut muscles of his forearm pressed against the shower wall as he gradually relaxes.

He runs his hand down one lek until he gets to her shoulder, then squeezes. “Thought this was supposed to be for you.”

She stands and shuts off the shower. “We’re getting to that part. You dry me, I’ll dry you.”

Two minutes later she’s dry except for the layer of steam that still hovers in the air and the clammy spot on her rear as Kanan hoists her onto the counter. Well, tries to hoist her onto the counter. She’s frustrating his efforts with her refusal to stop towel-drying his hair, which is great fun. 

...Right up to the moment she ends up butt-first in the sink. Then it’s just funny.

“Never known you to get high off of caf,” he teases.

“Oh, it’s not the caf, it’s other substances.” She licks her lips then kicks a foot in frustration because, kriff it, he can’t see that. “Also, there’s not enough room up here.”

“Give me that.” He grabs the towel she’s been using on him and bunches it up over the faucet so she won’t bruise her back. Well, shower sex had been her idea. Then he twists her to the side just a little...pulls her legs up just a little...and hunches in a position that she has no idea _how_ he is holding before licking a wide stripe right between her legs, and it is _perfect._

“Perfect,” she breathes, because he is a good boy and he deserves some kind of reward. So he does it again, and again, not teasing, just taking her incrementally higher with every swipe of his tongue and his—ooooh, there’s the beard grazing her tchilla. She hovers there on the edge of orgasm and the edge of the counter for a very long time, her legs trembling, making those little keening sounds that he loves, only she’s not doing it on purpose right now, she’s just having a fantastic orgasm, and when she’s finally finished he lifts her onto the more comfortable floor.

“Mine,” she says childishly, patting the side of his beard, an echo of her earlier thoughts: Mine, my body is mine.

He misinterprets, though, and it’s more of a pledge when he agrees, “Yours.”

“Hera?”

They both startle. The voice isn’t Kanan’s. It’s...Ezra in the common area, having no idea where they are. Of course.

Hera’s mood is much better now, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy about all of what happened today.

“Hera?”

Ezra sounds contrite. Still…

She tosses Kanan one towel and wraps the other around herself from armpits to knees. Then she opens the door to the fresher and leans against it, arms crossed forebodingly. “What?”

“I wanted to say I’m s—” His eyes widen. At the same time he trips over the pile of armor in front of the fresher door. “Sorry! Oh, Force, I’m sorry!” He backpedals in alarm. Behind her, Kanan sniggers.

“We’ll talk later, okay?” she says more kindly.

“Okay. Okay.” He’s already halfway out of the room.

“That was mean,” Kanan says behind her, trying not to laugh. Well, sort of trying.

“I feel all better now,” she tells him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know about infinite variety and all that, but my guys, these two are settling into a preferred pattern (as couples do), aren't they?


	10. An Inside Man

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear there is fooling around in this chapter, as promised... It's just not that MUCH of the chapter. 
> 
> On a minor note, I invented Nubian Holiday as a joke a few chapters ago. Obviously, the name is a play on Roman Holiday. The plot, now that it’s been sort-of invented, is different, because too much fidelity to the original starts to feel gimmicky.

It’s late afternoon when they arrive on Atollon, which Kanan knows because the sun is unpleasantly warm and because (thank the Force) the chronometer on his wrist comm now automatically informs him when it updates for a new system. This mission has been a disorienting mix of emotions.  _ Ezra _ is a mix of emotions, fury and hurt at the death of his friend, the adrenaline high of a fight, bafflement and amusement at the situation with Kallus. His padawan stops on the shuttle’s ramp (Is he waiting for his eyes to adjust to the sun? The warmth hits Kanan full in the face), and Chopper, stuck behind Kanan, prods him impatiently in the shins. That droid, at least, is always predictable, and after so long Kanan has developed a weird sense of gratitude for the infallibility of all those jabs and grumbles.

Zeb meets them, but Sabine and Hera are both working. There’s no chance for their whole crew to gather until the end of the day. Honestly, that’s not too bad—these days, their various duties keep them apart as often as not. 

“So,” Hera says, sweeping in from a training run and heading straight for the noodle soup that Zeb’s prepared, “Kallus? Tell me about that!” 

Sabine pushes past them, brooding and determined, heading for her room. “Wait!” Kanan calls, and she freezes like a guilty thing. “Food first.” He can picture that annoyed shoulder-slump as she sighs and grabs a bowl, ladling soup with a frustrated whack. 

“What’s with you?” Zeb asks her. 

“I guess the rest of you didn’t get a chance to look over the plans for the new Interceptor yet, then.” 

“We were a little busy,” Kanan admits. “But from what you said, it seemed pretty bad.” 

“It  _ is  _ bad! Like ‘these aren’t very expensive to build and will definitely screw us’ bad!” 

Kanan keeps his tone carefully neutral. “Sounds like a problem,” he offers. 

_ “Ugh!” _ If there’s one thing Sabine hates, it’s being handled.

Kanan shrugs at Hera, who pauses for long enough to do a quick mental calculation and then says, all diplomacy, “Maybe we should watch a holo together tonight.” 

Sabine and Ezra, each slinking out of the room with their dinner, sigh identical, long-suffering sighs. 

“Good idea,” Kanan seconds. 

“I’d really like to look at those plans more…” 

“Yeah, I’ve got stuff to do, too.” 

Hera waits for exactly the right moment—long enough to build effect, short enough to avoid being dramatic. “I would really like to spend some time with you,” she says in her most sincere tone, “but if you’re too busy, I understand.” 

And that is how you keep Ezra and Sabine from brooding in their rooms all evening. 

“I’m game,” Zeb offers, clueing in for once without being obvious about it.

“Okay.” They can practically hear the effort it costs for Sabine to take a break instead of going back to those schematics. “Me, too.”

“Ezra?” Hera asks. 

“What?” 

“Are you staying?” 

A too-long pause and a too-neutral voice. “Sure.” 

“Chopper forfeited his turn last time. It’s your pick.” 

“I don’t care. Whatever Kanan wants.” 

But Kanan’s not about to get bogged down in everyone’s indecision while holo night fizzles out, not again. “Nubian Holiday,” he declares immediately, to near-universal groans. 

“Really, Kanan?” 

“Sabine, unless you have another suggestion…” 

“No, no.” 

“I like Nubian Holiday,” Zeb mutters. 

“Good.” That’s Hera’s I-can-be-nice-because-I-won voice. “Zeb, do you want what’s left over? Somebody finish the soup; I’m going to clean the pan before it sticks on the bottom. Chopper, fire up the holoprojector.” She tugs at Kanan’s elbow on her way past, an unmistakable  _ come help me, _ so he follows her to the galley. 

“That was smooth,” he says, while she tosses a foaming tablet into the pan. 

“You want to tell me what happened out there today?” 

Where to start? Ryder and the sabotage, always a dangerous game to play so near your own home? Mr. Sumar sneaking them into the factory? _ Ezra Bridger, I hardly recognize you, you’re so tall… _ Chopper infiltrating the restricted section? Kallus, of all people, helping them? 

Or maybe start with Mr. Sumar, again. Mr. Sumar pressing the acceleration pedal and careening towards death while Kanan clamped his hand over Ezra’s shoulder. 

“No,” he decides. “I don’t think either of us wants to talk about it. Ask tomorrow, okay?” 

Hera scrubs the pan. When she’s done, she says, “Okay,” and they head back to the common area, and that’s that. 

Kanan loves romantic comedies—the contrived plotlines reassure him that he’s never in for a nasty surprise, that everyone’s going home happy and together at the end of the show—and Nubian Holiday, shot on location before the Clone Wars began, is the top of the line. Hera tolerates these movies because she loves him. Sabine has no such chill. “Oh, here we go,” she says, as the music starts. The cameras must be panning in on the domes of Theed. And five minutes later: “She’s clueless and he’s a manchild. What do they see in each other?” 

Kanan doesn’t take it personally—it’s the same old defensive grumbling every time they force her to watch a movie like this—but tonight the repetition depresses him instead of amusing him. Sabine must sound hollow even to her own ears, because her protests fade out after ten minutes, and she resorts to fidgeting in the booth next to him, tapping her foot, instead. Ezra does absolutely nothing. Kanan’s not even sure he’s watching the projection. Hera narrates what’s happening in a low murmur every so often, but Kanan doesn’t need the description; he’s watched this holo so many times he can play it in his head. Then, in the show, the leading man falls head over heels for the leading lady. Literally—he somersaults right over her parked speeder. 

Nobody chuckles. Nobody even groans. 

“Come on, guys,” Kanan says. “It’s not that mediocre.” 

“Hmph,” Sabine huffs. 

“Ezra?”

His padawan jumps. “What?” 

“You okay?”

“Oh...yeah. I guess I’m just not in the mood for something funny right now. Don’t mind me.” 

In the holo, the leading lady is still berating the leading man with indignant chatter, whacking him with a datapad while he tries to get a word in edgewise

“No, kid.” Kanan sighs. “It’s not you. I guess nobody’s really in the mood for it.” He turns the projector off and they sit in a deafening silence. 

Zeb makes it three whole minutes before he cracks. “It’s too quiet in here. I’m going to turn on the news.” He punches the button on the side of the table, flips through channels at disorienting speed, and ends on the clipped, Core-Worlds tones of  _ The Coruscant Chronicle:  _

“On the campaign trail in Juranno, Princess Leia Organa, the leading candidate for Alderaan’s Senate seat, gave a controversial speech…” 

“Hey, Leia!” Ezra says, the first interest he’s shown this evening. 

The Princess of Alderaan still sounds the same—that same mix of willful child and wise-beyond-her-years warrior they’d met over a year ago. “Sheev Palpatine’s colonial approach to politics has, indeed, made us into an empire. We dominate anyone weaker than the great machine of our military and destroy anyone brave enough to stand against us. But we are not a dictatorship, whatever he might claim. As long as we have an elected Senate, we are still a Republic.” 

“Ouch,” says Sabine. “She can’t say that. They’re going to arrest her. Can she say that?”

Hera shrugs. “She’s already won her primary and she’s massively popular on Alderaan for saying things like this, so I guess she can. For now.” 

“Until the Emperor finds some way to accuse her of breaking the law.” 

“...The Empire’s take on mining rights along the Kessel Trade Corridor has been nothing short of slave labor. As your Senator, I will propose that we withdraw troops immediately and recommence negotiations with the Miner’s Union. Multiple watchdog organizations have reported…” the Princess pauses, swallowing, “...tens of thousands of war crimes in the disputed areas. Far beyond the wanton destruction of property. Rapes, murders… We all saw the holo of the children whose bodies made it to Zerm.  _ We _ are doing this. Your Emperor is doing this.” She pauses again, this time for effect, meets the eyes of every reporter in the audience, and continues, “In addition to the withdrawal of troops, we must send immediate aid to the Kessel System, and we must send it through civilian channels. This is nothing less than a betrayal of the principles upon which the Republic was founded.” 

The crowd of listeners, subdued as she speaks of atrocities, tense as she criticizes the most powerful man in the galaxy, meets her indignation with their own anger. They erupt into cheers. 

“And as long as we have an elected Senate—” Leia prompts. 

“ WE. ARE. STILL. A. REPUBLIC!” they shout back to her. 

On the Ghost, everyone winces. 

“She can’t possibly think that’s going to pass the Senate,” Sabine says. “What’s she doing?”

They frown in unison, the one expression the whole family shares despite their different genes, brows knitting as they think over a problem. 

It’s Zeb who comes up with the answer: “She’s tanking.” 

“What do you mean?” Hera asks. 

“She’s safe, right? You just said it. She’s going to get elected no matter what, and probably  _ re _ -elected, if Juranno’s any indication. So she’s drawing all the enemy fire. She’s saying all of the things that somebody ought to say, even if they don’t do any good. And all the fascists scream at her.” 

“Right!” Sabine says, realization dawning. “Then Mon Mothma or one of the other resistance Senators can propose a toned-down version of the Princess’s plan, and nobody attacks them because they’re all still frothing at the mouth about Leia Organa. And _ their _ plan has a chance of actually passing, whereas if Leia had stayed quiet, it would have been political suicide.” 

“Smart girls.” Zeb grins at Sabine. “The galaxy is made out of smart girls.” 

“Huh,” Kanan says. Neat. 

But the news turns to the Kessel Sector in earnest—day twenty-four of open rebellion, the slaves-come-freedom-fighters dying by the thousands under fire from Stormtroopers. Chopper predicts their surrender within a day.

“No,” Kanan says. 

How much money will he put on it, Chopper wants to know. 

“None, you sociopath, but they won’t surrender. They’re dead either way.” 

“Maybe we should try watching Nubian Holiday again,” Hera suggests, and they all laugh in that disbelieving little way that means at least their despair is shared. 

Kanan calls it. “I think movie night is DOA.” 

“Sorry, Hera,” Sabine offers. 

“Eh, it could be a lot worse.” 

“We could be on Kessel.” 

“Nice, Ezra, very nice.” 

Sabine, Ezra, and Chopper peel off in their own directions immediately. Zeb, Hera, and Kanan sit in the common area and talk in low voices about the chances for civil resistance, the chances for armed resistance. It’s an old conversation, but the details are always changing. The picture looks grimmer every time they return to it, but they keep planning. Figuring out what the next best chance is. What else can they do, after all? And if they’ve got a narrow set of options, sometimes it’s nice to talk anyway, just to do your best with people who trust you and know you: “I don’t know, I think you’re being overly pessimistic…” “I was going through system reports for Rebel Command today. You want to hear something that will really make your blood boil?” “Force, no, I don’t think I can take anything else today.” 

Eventually, Zeb yawns and shifts in his seat, stretching. “That’s enough doom and gloom for the night,” he says. “If Ezra’s still up, I’m going to make him mope somewhere else so I can get some sleep.” 

“Hey—” Kanan tells him. “Go easy on him.”

Zeb stops in his tracks, but like Hera, he doesn’t push for explanation. “All right, all right,” he says after a moment, pretending to grumble, pretending everything’s normal. 

And then Kanan and Hera are left to sit in deflated silence. Kanan tries to figure out some way to move forward—something encouraging to say or something ordinary to do—and fails. Hera, he’d guess, twists her hands in her lap.

“Want to fuck?” he asks. 

Hera sighs and says, “Yes.” 

So he takes her hand and pulls her into the galley, the farthest room from the crew quarters, locking the door behind them. He doesn’t really have sex on the mind, and he’d guess Hera doesn’t, either. What he really wants is to be close to her, to climb inside her while she wraps her arms and legs around him—not forget his troubles, exactly...more like remember who he is and what he has—and so to come home at the end of a long day. His hands find her waist easily and he lifts her to the countertop, setting her down on the hollow metal surface with an echoing thunk. 

“Shh,” Hera cautions. “Somebody might still be up.” 

“Should we put on some music?” 

“Oh, yeah, that’s not too suspicious.” 

“Better than them hearing us. I’m going to turn on some music.” Kanan fiddles with his wrist comm until he finds something appropriate for the moment, some soft, Garel-made songs that sound almost like lullabies. He’s standing between her knees, spots of warmth against his hips. She swings her legs on either side of him while he thumbs through the voice menu options on his comm.

“Nice,” Hera approves the music. Bare of their gloves, her fingers run under his collar, but then she backs off and smooths her palms down his chest, more comforting than sexual. She pets his beard. Finally she stops scritching and simply says, “I like you,” offering comfort for whatever the day has brought him without having to know what it is. 

_ I like you, too, _ he’s going to say, but her lips touch his before he has a chance—soft, meeting rather than demanding, a kiss that’s almost chaste and very sweet. Her nose bumps his mask. “But I don’t like this mask,” she complains. 

“So I’ve heard. Hold on.” He unhooks it from the hair that’s gotten tangled around the clasps and hands it to her, knowing she’ll keep track of where she puts it. “Better?” 

“Better.” Hera strokes his face, thumbs caressing from nose to temple. She’s smoothing out his worry lines. Her lips land on his cheekbone this time, and then she tugs at his shoulders and he leans in obligingly so she can kiss his brow. “These are the galaxy’s prettiest eyebrows,” she says, mock-serious, and when she tries to kiss his cheek again, Kanan turns his head and meets her mouth with his, instead. 

It’s still not sexual, these long, slow kisses. It’s just nice. The tension drains from his body bit by bit, taking with it the feeling that he ought to be doing something, fixing something. In his arms, Hera relaxes as well. Even then it’s just sensual, the easy interplay of lips and tongue and teeth, Hera huffing against his face when hair from his moustache goes up her nose. And then finally he catches her swollen lower lip between his own, and the feeling ignites in the pit of his stomach. A moment later Hera tilts her head and takes a quick breath, and he knows she’s caught it, too. It’s late, absurdly late considering how early they’re expected to be up tomorrow, but neither of them can sleep, so instead he’s going to have her very slowly on the galley counter. Hera scoots forward to press them together and Kanan helps, hands on her rear pulling her tightly against him. They can’t get as close as they’d like in this position, but Hera’s got her legs spread wide, and she’s warm against his abdomen, and the frustrating lightness of her body on his is enough to drive him higher. 

He gets a good handful of ass, then runs his hand up her side and gets a slightly less good handful of breast, the thick leather vest in his way. One-handed, he can only tug at its fasteners, but he gets the vest loose enough to palm a breast and then stroke up the plump outside edge. 

Hera breaks from his mouth for air and comes back in just beneath his jaw, her lips parted and her tongue a tantalizing swirl against his skin—just hard enough to let him know she’s there, not hard enough to leave a mark. Meanwhile, her fingers slide up the back of his neck and spear into his hair under the queue, tugging lightly, a welcome massage. Kanan’s breath comes out a little more like a groan than he means it to. He tugs her vest down further and she is frustratingly hard-to-reach softness under his hand. Hera nuzzles his shirt to the side, her face insistent at his collar, then licks a spot just above his collarbone. 

“I haven’t showered yet,” Kanan cautions her. 

“I know. You taste like salt.” 

His cock jumps. 

The door control beeps. 

Both of them freeze. Kanan touches Hera’s arm, a gesture that means  _ Are you going to answer or am I? Because if we’re both in here with the door locked, it’s pretty obvious what’s happening.  _

The control beeps again, someone trying to enter. 

Hera clears her throat. “Do you need something?” she calls. 

Nobody answers, but the door beeps insistently, which is concerning enough for Kanan to drag his mind away from its half-drunk-with-Hera state and try to figure out what’s going on. 

It’s Ezra at the door, a subdued Ezra. He can sense little else. “Ezra,” he mouths to Hera, who is rustling next to him, tucking herself back into her clothes. Kanan waits for her to still, then opens the door. 

Ezra doesn’t try to come in, just stands in the doorway. He  _ does  _ register Kanan’s presence—by this point Kanan has a laser-read on the boy’s feelings, even if he can’t exactly read his mind. What he senses is...muffled. Preoccupied. Not quite there. “Kanan,” Ezra says, “I need my lightsaber. Do you have it?” 

Behind him, Hera hops off the counter, concerned. “Ezra, you took your lightsaber to your bunk, like you always do.” 

Kanan puts a hand on his padawan’s arm, shocked, again, to discover how much taller he’s gotten in the past few months, how much different he must look than the half-starved kid they picked up on Lothal. Ezra stills under his touch, waiting patiently. “He’s sleepwalking again,” he tells Hera. 

“Nightmares?” 

“I don’t think so. Just confused. Half-awake.” Louder, he says, “Hold on, Ezra. I’m going to find your lightsaber, okay?” 

“Okay.” 

“You want a drink of water?” 

“Yeah.” 

Hera pours a bit into the bottom of a glass and brings it to him, pressing it into his hands carefully. “Should we give him that medicine?” she asks. 

“I don’t know. It’s not a nightmare.” 

“The droid said ‘sleep disturbances.’” 

Ezra finishes drinking and forgets the glass instantly. Hera scrambles next to him and rescues it before it can hit the floor. 

“Let’s see if he goes back to sleep, first. I don’t like the idea of giving him medicine when he’s not awake.”

“Fair enough.” 

Ezra mutters something unintelligible, his thoughts garbled, flitting from scene to shifting scene. 

“Here’s your lightsaber,” Kanan tells him, pressing his own empty hand into Ezra’s. 

“Thanks, Kanan. Thanks,” Ezra mumbles. 

“I’ll walk him back to bed,” Hera offers. “It’s my turn, anyway.” She wants to do it, so Kanan just nods. 

“Where’s that white lothcat?” 

“This way, I think. Come on, Ezra.” She leads him out as she has so often done for Kanan. 

Kanan follows a few steps into the common room, listening to the murmur of Hera’s voice. The doors to Ezra’s bunk open. The voices disappear. 

He feels the exact moment when Ezra wakes fully, the disorienting shock of the world sliding into place and the jolt of danger. It’s five steps down the hallway and he’s almost to Ezra’s door when his padawan calms, realizing where he is, realizing that it’s only Hera looming over him in the dark. Kanan stops. No need to rush in and embarrass him more. 

But from here he can hear the quiet conversation, or at least the ebb and flow of it, if not all the words. They’re keeping their voices low so as not to wake Zeb. Hera will be asking him about his dreams. A long pause, and then Ezra answers—whatever he’s saying, he’s decided to talk to her. 

Hera’s voice comes to him a little more clearly: “Because that’s my job.” 

Ezra murmurs another question, this one low and resentful. 

Hera answers in the same nonplussed tone, “Because that’s her job.” 

When Ezra answers he is noticeably louder, so Kanan hears him clearly: “And whose part is to die?”

Hera meets him with uncomprehending silence. 

“The grunts?” he asks. “The factory workers who don’t matter? Not the heroes. We save the heroes, right?” 

“Ezra…” Hera doesn’t know what he’s talking about. They should have told her. “Nobody,” she settles. It would be comforting if the next part weren’t so completely honest. “We all die, Ezra, but that’s not our part. Our part is what we do before that.” 

He loses the words again, but not the emotions behind them: Ezra hurt and Hera soothing, then Hera soothing and hurt, then Ezra hurt and soothed. At some point, Zeb’s voice joins theirs, not as irritated as Kanan would expect from the few times he’s accidentally woken their crewmate. A few minutes later, Ezra says, “I’m fine, Hera,” and Hera asks another question, and he says, “Yeah. Goodnight.” 

Hoping not to get caught eavesdropping, Kanan walks back to the galley and picks up the clean pot. Hera looks for him there, pausing at the door as she enters. “Storage is to your left,” she tells him. And then, “It’s pretty late.” 

“Yeah. You want to go to sleep?” 

“I don’t think I can, yet.” 

“You want to pick up where we left off?” 

“Sure.” 

A quiet beep as she locks the door. She takes the pot from him and puts it in the cabinet. They sit together on the cold floor. Hera leans over him, and her lips meet his, and it is nice, kissing, very nice, but it doesn’t go anywhere. After a solid ten minutes when nothing else has happened, they stop to consider each other. 

“Do you really want to do this?” Hera asks. 

“Yes. And no.” 

She sighs and scoots until her back is against the cabinet, sitting next to him with their shoulders touching. Kanan laces their fingers together. 

“What happened?” 

“We, uh...we lost someone.”

Next to him, Hera nods, expecting as much. 

“Ezra’s friend from childhood. I think he looked out for him. And we had to… I _ made _ him...stand there and watch it. I couldn’t think of anything else to do.” 

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“He’s really upset right now, but I think he’ll be okay long-term, Kanan.” 

“Maybe we could have done something. I don’t know. Every time someone dies, I think ‘maybe there’s something I could have done differently.’” 

A long sigh next to his shoulder and a too-long pause, and then Hera says, “I know you do.” 

“But you don’t think we could have helped,” he fills in the blanks. 

Hera’s answer sounds brittle, vulnerable. Tired. She’s already used her energy taking care of Ezra, and none of them was exactly feeling great before that. “I don’t know. Sometimes we just...lose. Usually. But we don’t make the Empire kill people. That’s not our fault. You have to let go of it and know that it’s not your fault.” 

The tension in her body means she’s trying to keep back tears. He is abruptly guilty for putting another burden on her tonight and then asking for reassurance on top of that. “Hey,” he says, squeezing her hand. 

She wants none of that. “Within my lifetime,” she says, taking a deep, determined breath. “We’re going to start winning within my lifetime. And then people won’t have to die.” 

“Really?” he asks, gentle and skeptical. 

“Not like that, anyway.” 

“Okay,” he says. 

They sit together in silence. Hera is finally the one to break it. “I don’t want this to be just another day.” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I don’t want you to come back and pretend like this is fine, or like it hurts any less because it happens to us all the time.” 

How can he explain? He didn’t avoid the subject out of some desire to pretend it isn’t important. Actually, it’s  _ too _ important, too raw to put into words. “Me either,” he tries. “I just...didn’t want to talk about it. Yet. Neither does he. It’s not because we’re brushing it off.” 

“He’s barely eighteen.” 

“Yeah, well—” Kanan gives himself a long sigh to think out his response. “You’d been through a lot by eighteen. So had I.” 

They say nothing at all again, each trying to find a path through the things they can’t fix. Finally, Hera asks, “Do you think we’re...okay?” 

He doesn’t catch her drift. “We, like me and you?” 

“No, I know we’re okay. I mean all of us.” 

Kanan considers for a long time. Are they okay? He thinks about Sabine, locked in her room and forgetting to eat because Mandalorians don’t feel fear and loneliness, they feel anger and drive. Of Zeb, whose first priority is his team, whose second is busting stormtrooper’s helmets. Having lost everything once, he can’t lose again, so the safety of the larger galaxy too often rates third for him. Of Chopper, whose issues, whatever they are, started long before Kanan’s time, and who is every bit as cranky and mean as he seems. And Hera, of course. Hera, who has her quirks too, not the least of which is a disturbing ability to compartmentalize her feelings and ignore her own needs. Most of the time, anyway.

And then there’s Ezra, only a year out from losing his parents and, what, nine months out from their more recent trauma? Ezra, for whom today barely registers on the seismic scale of life-wrecking events. Ezra, who holds it together just fine during the day when there are things to do but wakes in terrors and sweats as many nights as not. Kanan knows that routine intimately. Only unlike him, Ezra has access to top-of-the-line medical droids. He has purpose. And he has a family. Hera to talk to him when he has bad dreams. And Kanan. Kanan, who is going to do better this time around than he has in his own life.

Kanan, who also has a purpose. 

“No,” he answers Hera at last. “I don’t think we’re okay, exactly. It’s too late for that. Even you have xorexipine stocked in the medicine cabinet, and you’re one of the least anxious people I know.”

“That’s just for sleep the past few months,” Hera protests, but he ignores her. 

“—But I don’t think—for any of us—that we’re incapable of happiness. I don’t think we’re broken.” Kanan wants to tell her that this is because of her bringing them together, but it sounds trite even to his own ears, and Hera will brush it off for sure, so instead he says, “We really have something here. I try not to take it for granted.” 

“Yeah, me too.” 

They sit in silence again, then Hera pulls their hands into her lap and starts fiddling with his fingers. “I’ve got a flight at 1100 tomorrow.” 

“Okay.” 

“It’s combat.” 

Kanan sighs. “Okay.” 

“It’s not particularly dangerous.” She brushes her thumb compulsively against his own, back and forth. 

“So, then…” 

“I’m just in the mood to think about mortality tonight, I guess.”

“I never think about mortality after 0200 standard,” he says, trying to muster up humor. 

“Liar,” Hera says, trying to muster up indignation. “That is all you think about after 0200 standard.” 

“Caught.” He doesn’t tell her to be careful because that would be too much like jinxing the flight. Instead, he says, “You’ll be okay.” 

“I’ll be okay,” she echoes. “This isn’t the first time.”

“It’ll be fine,” he says. 

“It’ll be fine.” 

And all at once everything is welling up in him, horror and loss—losses that keep getting closer, pain that is always someone else’s, someone he cares about, leaving him to witness as he dodges that blaster bolt yet again. Who will it be? Who will it be when death finally finds them? They’ve been so absurdly lucky for so long. It can’t be much longer, now. 

“Kanan?” 

He presses his lips together. 

“Oh, love, it’s all right.” 

It is too late for an existential crisis. This is a sign that they both need to go to bed. So instead of breaking down and talking to Hera, Kanan just lays his head in her lap and wraps his arms around her middle, pressing his face into her stomach. What’s worse—losing one of them and losing a big piece of his entire world? Or dying and leaving them behind to suffer forever in the aftermath of that destruction?

Hera caresses the top of his head and waits for him to talk. 

“Sorry. I just… don’t want to leave you.” 

“I know. I know.”


End file.
